Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English composer Ivor Gurney.
Last updated on November 18, 2024.
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from manic depression through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music. Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".
There are strange hells within the minds war made.
A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers - or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.
In the mind of all the English soldiers there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly comtemptuous kindness - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.
The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.