“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and fall and rise again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet. Boats and youth passing and distant trees, ‘the falling fountains of the pendent trees.’ I see it all. I feel it all. I am inspired. My eyes fill with tears. Yet even as I feel this, I lash my frenzy higher and higher. It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop— how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Tagged: Ideals, Longing, Power of Words
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The Waves

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