Quote#Nature
You buy some flowers for your table; You tend them tenderly as you’re…
Quote bySamuel Hoffenstein · 1890–1947
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing (1928), Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing, no. 1 (p. 53).
English (original)
You buy some flowers for your table; You tend them tenderly as you’re able; You fetch them water from hither and thither— What thanks do you get for it all? They wither.
— Samuel Hoffenstein
More from Samuel Hoffenstein
When trouble drives me into rhyme, Which is two-thirds of all the time, What peace a thought like this can give— Great is the age in which we live!
When you’re away, I’m restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only Here’s the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you are here.
The dead they sleep a long, long sleep; The dead they rest, and their rest is deep; The dead have peace, but the living weep.
Four of us together dwell— Two from Heaven and two from Hell; Four of us under the selfsame sky— Love and Death and a Dream and I.
Oh, how various is the scene Allowed to Man for his demesne!
When the wind is in the tree, It makes a noise just like the sea, As if there were not noise enough To bother one, without that stuff.