MORRIS. 1802-1864.
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough![595-1]
In youth it sheltered me,
And I 'll protect it now.
_Woodman, spare that Tree! 1830._
A song for our banner! The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station:
"United we stand, divided we fall!"
It made and preserves us a nation![595-2]
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever,
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the flag of our Union forever!
_The Flag of our Union._
Near the lake where drooped the willow,
Long time ago!
_Near the Lake._
FOOTNOTES:
[595-1] See Campbell, page 516.
[595-2] See Key, page 517.
ALBERT G. GREENE. 1802-1868.
Old Grimes is dead, that good old man
We never shall see more;
He used to wear a long black coat
All buttoned down before.[596-1]
_Old Grimes._
FOOTNOTES:
[596-1]
John Lee is dead, that good old man,--
We ne'er shall see him more;
He used to wear an old drab coat
All buttoned down before.
To the memory of John Lee, who died May 21, 1823.
_An Inscription in Matherne Churchyard._
Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,--
You 'll never see him more;
He used to wear a long brown coat
That buttoned down before.
HALLIWELL: _Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 60._
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 1802-1880.
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes
as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this
youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
Switzerland.
_Supposititious Speech of James Otis. The Rebels, Chap. iv._
DOUGLAS JERROLD. 1803-1857.
He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine
would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.
_Douglas Jerrold's Wit._
The surest way to hit a woman's heart is to take aim kneeling.
_Douglas Jerrold's Wit._
The nobleman of the garden.
_The Pineapple._
That fellow would vulgarize the day of judgment.
_A Comic Author._
The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
_The Anglo-French Alliance._
The life of the husbandman,--a life fed by the bounty of earth
and sweetened by the airs of heaven.
_The Husbandman's Life._
Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to
meet it.
_Meeting Troubles Half-way._
Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she
laughs with a harvest.
_A Land of Plenty_ [_Australia_].
The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I
were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I
could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.
_Ugly Trades._
A blessed companion is a book,--a book that fitly chosen is a
life-long friend.
_Books._
There is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any
other gown in the world.
_A Wedding-gown._
He was so good he would pour rose-water on a toad.
_A Charitable Man._
As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate;" and the water, put nought
in in malice.
_Shakespeare Grog._
Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the number of the
steps.
_A Matter-of-fact Man._
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1803-1882.
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
_Each and All._
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
_Each and All._
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
_The Problem._
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
_The Problem._
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew:
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
_The Problem._
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.
_The Problem._
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
_Hamatreya._
Good bye, proud world! I 'm going home;
Thou art not my friend, and I 'm not thine.[598-1]
_Good Bye._
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
_Good Bye._
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
_The Rhodora._
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.[599-1]
_Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing._
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
_Ode to Beauty._
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
_Give all to Love._
Love not the flower they pluck and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
_Blight._
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.
_Dirge._
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattl'd farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.[599-2]
_Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument._
What potent blood hath modest May!
_May-Day._
And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
_May-Day._
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is never wide.
_Nemesis._
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
_Boston Hymn. 1863._
Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire.
_Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857._
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
_Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857._
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
_Voluntaries._
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.
_Voluntaries._
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
_Solution._
Born for success he seemed,
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.
_In Memoriam._
Nor mourn the unalterable Days
That Genius goes and Folly stays.
_In Memoriam._
Fear not, then, thou child infirm;
There 's no god dare wrong a worm.
_Compensation._
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
_Beauty._
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill?
_Suum Cuique._
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
_Quatrains. Nature._
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,--
"'T is man's perdition to be safe
When for the truth he ought to die."
_Sacrifice._
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
_Boston._
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and
there abide, the huge world will come round to him.[601-1]
_Nature. Addresses and Lectures. The American Scholar._
There is no great and no small[601-2]
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.
_Essays. First Series. Epigraph to History._
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
_Essays. First Series. History._
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
_Essays. First Series. History._
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and
fruitage is the world.
_Essays. First Series. History._
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its
aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and
customs.
_Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance._
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
_Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance._
To be great is to be misunderstood.
_Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance._
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.
_Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance._
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature.
Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
_Essays. First Series. Compensation._
It is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but
himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
_Essays. First Series. Compensation._
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary
of the intuitions.
_Essays. First Series. Compensation._
Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which
it proceeds.
_Essays. First Series. Spiritual Laws._
All mankind love a lover.
_Essays. First Series. Love._
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
_Essays. First Series. Epigraph to Friendship._
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.
_Essays. First Series. Friendship._
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
_Essays. First Series. Circles._
There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behaviour
yield to the energy of the individual.
_Essays. Second Series. Manners._
And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and
Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish if you will show
me the fountain of the Nile."
_New England Reformers._
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds
us of others.
_Representative Men. Uses of Great Men._
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish
to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?[602-1]
_Representative Men. Montaigne._
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him
who can adequately place it.
_Representative Men. Shakespeare._
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
_English Traits. Race._
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in
his shoes.
_English Traits. Manners._
A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
_English Traits. Aristocracy._
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
_The Conduct of Life. Wealth._
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts,
is a power behind the eye.
_The Conduct of Life. Behaviour._
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
_The Conduct of Life. Behaviour._
Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
_The Conduct of Life. Considerations by the Way._
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness
in heaven or earth.
_The Conduct of Life. Society and Solitude._
Hitch your wagon to a star.
_The Conduct of Life. Civilization._
I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a
French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good
version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English
speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region
under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles
River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
_The Conduct of Life. Books._
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
_The Conduct of Life. Old Age._
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for
courtesy.
_Letters and Social Aims. Social Aims._
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
_Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality._
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of
it.[604-1]
_Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality._
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor
replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He
breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
_Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality._
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent.
_Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality._
The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted
until within this century.
_Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality._
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any
material force; that thoughts rule the world.
_Progress of Culture. Phi Beta Kappa Address, July 18, 1867._
I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference;
no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion which
they professed, whether Arab in the desert or Frenchman in the
Academy. I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over
the world were of one religion.[604-2]
_Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Preacher._
FOOTNOTES:
[598-1] See Byron, page 544.
[599-1] I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men
into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions
ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.--RUMBOLD (when on the
scaffold).
[599-2]
No war or battle sound
Was heard the world around.
MILTON: _Hymn of Christ's Nativity, line 31._
[601-1] Everything comes if a man will only wait.--DISRAELI:
_Tancred, book iv. chap. viii._
[601-2] See Pope, page 316.
[602-1] See Davies, page 176.
[604-1] There is not less wit nor less invention in applying
rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first
author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say
that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a
talent.--BAYLE: _vol. ii. p. 779._
Though old the thought and oft exprest,
'T is his at last who says it best.
LOWELL: _For an Autograph._
[604-2] See Johnson, page 370.
RICHARD HENGEST HORNE. 1803- ----.
'T is always morning somewhere in the world.[604-3]
_Orion. Book iii. Canto ii._ (1843.)
FOOTNOTES:
[604-3] 'T is always morning somewhere.--LONGFELLOW: _Wayside Inn.
Birds of Killingworth, stanza 16._
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 1804-1879.
My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind.[605-1]
_Prospectus of the Public Liberator, 1830._
I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will
not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard!
_Salutatory of the Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831._
Our country is the world; our countrymen are mankind.
_Motto of the Liberator, Vol. i. No. 1, 1831._
I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.
_The Liberator, Vol. i. No. 1, 1831._
Our country is the world; our countrymen are all mankind.
_Prospectus of the Liberator, Dec. 15, 1837._
The compact which exists between the North and the South is a
covenant with death and an agreement with hell.[605-2]
_Resolution adopted by the Antislavery Society, Jan. 27, 1843._
FOOTNOTES:
[605-1] Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a
citizen of the world.--PLUTARCH: _On Banishment._
Diogenes, when asked from what country he came, replied, "I am a
citizen of the world."--DIOGENES LAERTIUS.
_My country is the world_, and my religion is to do good.--THOMAS
PAINE: _Rights of Man, chap. v._
[605-2] We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we
at agreement.--_Isaiah xxviii. 15._
MARY HOWITT. 1804-1888.
Old England is our home, and Englishmen are we;
Our tongue is known in every clime, our flag in every sea.
_Old England is our Home._
"Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly;
"'T is the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy."
_The Spider and the Fly._
SARAH FLOWER ADAMS. 1805-1848.
Nearer, my God, to Thee!
Nearer to Thee!
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee!
Nearer to Thee!
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 1805-1873.
Curse away!
And let me tell thee, Beausant, a wise proverb
The Arabs have,--"Curses are like young chickens,
And still come home to roost."
_The Lady of Lyons. Act v. Sc. 2._
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.[606-1]
_Richelieu. Act ii. Sc. 2._
Take away the sword;
States can be saved without it.
_Richelieu. Act ii. Sc. 2._
In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As "fail."
_Richelieu. Act ii. Sc. 2._
The brilliant chief, irregularly great,
Frank, haughty, rash,--the Rupert of debate![606-2]
_The New Timon._ (_1846._) _Part i._
_Alone!_--that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
_The New Timon._ (_1846._) _Part ii._
When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea.
_When Stars are in the quiet Skies._
Buy my flowers,--oh buy, I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar.
_Buy my Flowers._
The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.
_Night and Morning. Chap. vi._
FOOTNOTES:
[606-1] See Burton, page 189.
[606-2] In April, 1844, Mr. Disraeli thus alluded to Lord Stanley:
"The noble lord is the Rupert of debate."
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (EARL BEACONSFIELD). 1805-1881.
Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient.[607-1]
_On Import Duties, April 25, 1843._
The noble lord[607-2] is the Rupert of debate.[607-3]
_Speech, April, 1844._
A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
_Speech, March 17, 1845._
A precedent embalms a principle.
_Speech, Feb. 22, 1848._
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
_Speech, Jan. 24, 1860._
The characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.
_Speech, Nov. 25, 1864._
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
_Speech, May, 1865._
I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister,[607-4] who
said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe,
however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit
requires still more time to arrive at maturity.
_Speech, Nov. 9, 1867._
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
_Speech, June 24, 1870._
The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a
mother who talks about her own children.
_Speech, Nov. 19, 1870._
Apologies only account for that which they do not alter.
_Speech, July 28, 1871._
Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of
man.
_Speech, April 3, 1872._
I repeat . . . that all power is a trust; that we are accountable
for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all
springs, and all must exist.[608-1]
_Vivian Grey. Book vi. Chap. vii._
Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the
creatures of men.
_Vivian Grey. Book vi. Chap. vii._
The disappointment of manhood succeeds to the delusion of youth:
let us hope that the heritage of old age is not despair.
_Vivian Grey. Book viii. Chap. iv._
The first favourite was never heard of, the second favourite was
never seen after the distance post, all the ten-to-oners were in
the rear, and a dark horse[608-2] which had never been thought
of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in
the list, rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph.
_The Young Duke. Book i. Chap. v._
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
_Contarini Fleming. Part iv. Chap. v._
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.
_Coningsby. Book iii. Chap. i._
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars,
and each moment is a day, and the race a life.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. ii._
Only think of Cockie Graves having gone and done it!
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. ii._
The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister
immortal fame,--a quality of success which would almost seem to
include all others.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. iii._
The Egremonts had never said anything that was remembered, or
done anything that could be recalled.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. iii._
If the history of England be ever written by one who has the
knowledge and the courage,--and both qualities are equally
requisite for the undertaking,--the world will be more astonished
than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. iii._
That earliest shock in one's life which occurs to all of us;
which first makes us think.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. v._
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to
knowledge.
_Sybil. Book i. Chap. v._
Principle is ever my motto, not expediency.
_Sybil. Book ii. Chap. ii._
Property has its duties as well as its rights.[609-1]
_Sybil. Book ii. Chap. xi._
Mr. Kremlin was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one
idea, and that was wrong.[609-2]
_Sybil. Book iv. Chap. v._
Everything comes if a man will only wait.[609-3]
_Tancred. Book iv. Chap. viii._ (_1847._)
That when a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him
to retire.
_Lothair. Chap. xxviii._
You know who critics are?--the men who have failed in literature
and art.[609-4]
_Lothair. Chap. xxxv._
His Christianity was muscular.
_Endymion. Chap. xiv._
The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric
ever poured forth by the genius of man.
_Endymion. Chap. lii._
The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.
_Endymion. Chap. lxx._
"As for that," said Waldenshare, "sensible men are all of the
same religion." "Pray, what is that?" inquired the Prince.
"Sensible men never tell."[610-1]
_Endymion. Chap. lxxxi._
The sweet simplicity of the three per cents.[610-2]
_Endymion. Chap. xcvi._
FOOTNOTES:
[607-1] It is a condition which confronts us, not a
theory.--GROVER CLEVELAND: _Annual Message, 1887. Reference to the
Tariff._
[607-2] Lord Stanley.
[607-3] See Bulwer, page 606.
[607-4] William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
[608-1] See Webster, page 532.
[608-2] A common political phrase in the United States.
[609-1] See Drummond, page 582.
[609-2] See Johnson, page 371.
[609-3] See Emerson, page 601.
All things come round to him who will but wait.--LONGFELLOW:
_Tales of a Wayside Inn. The Student's Tale._ (1862.)
[609-4] See Coleridge, page 505.
[610-1] See Johnson, page 370.
An anecdote is related of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683),
who, in speaking of religion, said, "People differ in their
discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are
really but of one religion." To the inquiry of "What religion?"
the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it."--BURNET: _History of
my own Times, vol. i. p. 175, note_ (edition 1833).
[610-2] See Stowell, page 437.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 1807-1855.
And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.[610-3]
_The Omnipresence of the Deity. Part i._
The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount.[610-4]
_The Omnipresence of the Deity. Part i._
The solitary monk who shook the world
From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump
Thunder'd its challenge from his dauntless lips
In peals of truth.
_Luther. Man's Need and God's Supply._
And not from Nature up to Nature's God,[610-5]
But down from Nature's God look Nature through.
_Luther. A Landscape of Domestic Life._
FOOTNOTES:
[610-3] See Byron, page 547.
[610-4] We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in
the world. In the first place, no stream meanders or can possibly
meander level with the fount. In the next place, if streams did
meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like
each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting
upwards.--MACAULAY: _Review of Montgomery's Poems_ (_Eleventh
Edition_). _Edinburgh Review, April, 1830._
These lines were omitted in the subsequent edition of the poem.
[610-5] See Bolingbroke, page 304.
CHARLES JEFFERYS. 1807-1865.
Come o'er the moonlit sea,
The waves are brightly glowing.
_The Moonlit Sea._
The morn was fair, the skies were clear,
No breath came o'er the sea.
_The Rose of Allandale._
Meek and lowly, pure and holy,
Chief among the "blessed three."
_Charity._
Come, wander with me, for the moonbeams are bright
On river and forest, o'er mountain and lea.
_Come, wander with me._
A word in season spoken
May calm the troubled breast.
_A Word in Season._
The bud is on the bough again,
The leaf is on the tree.
_The Meeting of Spring and Summer._
I have heard the mavis singing
Its love-song to the morn;
I 've seen the dew-drop clinging
To the rose just newly born.
_Mary of Argyle._
We have lived and loved together
Through many changing years;
We have shared each other's gladness,
And wept each other's tears.
_We have lived and loved together._
LADY DUFFERIN. 1807-1867.
I 'm sitting on the stile, Mary,
Where we sat side by side.
_Lament of the Irish Emigrant._
I 'm very lonely now, Mary,
For the poor make no new friends;
But oh they love the better still
The few our Father sends!
_Lament of the Irish Emigrant._
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 1807-1882.
(_From the edition of 1886._)
Look, then, into thine heart, and write![612-1]
_Voices of the Night. Prelude._
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.[612-2]
_A Psalm of Life._
Life is real! life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
_A Psalm of Life._
Art is long, and time is fleeting,[612-3]
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.[612-4]
_A Psalm of Life._
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
_A Psalm of Life._
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
_A Psalm of Life._
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;[612-5]
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
_A Psalm of Life._
There is a reaper whose name is Death,[613-1]
And with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
_The Reaper and the Flowers._
The star of the unconquered will.
_The Light of Stars._
Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,--
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
_The Light of Stars._
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
_Flowers._
The hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain.
_Midnight Mass._
No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
_Sunrise on the Hills._
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
_Endymion._
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest![613-2]
_It is not always May._
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
_The Rainy Day._
The prayer of Ajax was for light.[614-1]
_The Goblet of Life._
O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!
_The Goblet of Life._
Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
_Maidenhood._
O thou child of many prayers!
Life hath quicksands; life hath snares!
_Maidenhood._
She floats upon the river of his thoughts.[614-2]
_The Spanish Student. Act ii. Sc. 3._
A banner with the strange device.
_Excelsior._
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,--
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy past
The forms that once have been.
_A Gleam of Sunshine._
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
_The Day is done._
A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
_The Day is done._
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
_The Day is done._
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
_The Building of the Ship._
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,--
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,--are all with thee!
_The Building of the Ship._
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
_The Fire of Drift-wood._
There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there;
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair.
_Resignation._
The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead.
_Resignation._
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
_Resignation._
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.
_Resignation._
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
_Resignation._
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.
_Resignation._
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
_The Builders._
This is the forest primeval.
_Evangeline. Part i._
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
_Evangeline. Part i. 1._
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
_Evangeline. Part i. 3._
And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler,
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
_Evangeline. Part ii. 5._
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.[616-1]
_The Courtship of Miles Standish. iv._
Into a world unknown,--the corner-stone of a nation![616-2]
_The Courtship of Miles Standish. iv._
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame.[616-3]
_The Ladder of Saint Augustine._
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.
_The Ladder of Saint Augustine._
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
_The Herons of Elmwood._
He has singed the beard of the king of Spain.[616-4]
_The Dutch Picture._
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
_Morituri Salutamus._
With useless endeavour
Forever, forever,
Is Sisyphus rolling
His stone up the mountain!
_The Masque of Pandora. Chorus of the Eumenides._
All things come round to him who will but wait.[617-1]
_Tales of a Wayside Inn. The Student's Tale._
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.
_The Golden Legend. iv._
Hospitality sitting with Gladness.
_Translation from Frithiof's Saga._
Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.
_Motto, Hyperion. Book i._[617-2]
Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love and joy and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish
And in itself to ashes burn.
_Hyperion. Book ii._
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half
the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of
passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the
leaves which remain are few in number.
_Hyperion. Book iv. Chap. viii._
Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.[618-1]
_Kavanagh._
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.[618-2]
_Inferno. Canto v. Line 121._
FOOTNOTES:
[612-1] See Philip Sidney, page 34.
[612-2] Things are not always what they seem.--PHÆDRUS: _Fables,
book iv. Fable 2._
[612-3] See Chaucer, page 6.
Art is long, life is short.--GOETHE: _Wilhelm Meister, vii. 9._
[612-4] Our lives are but our marches to the grave.-BEAUMONT AND
FLETCHER: _The Humorous Lieutenant, act iii. sc. 5._
[612-5] See Byron, page 553.
[613-1] There is a Reaper whose name is death.--ARNIM AND
BRENTANO: _Erntelied._ (From "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," ed. 1857,
vol. i. p. 59.)
[613-2] Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the
last.--CERVANTES: _Don Quixote, part ii. chap. lxxiv._
[614-1]
The light of Heaven restore;
Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.
POPE: _The Iliad, book xvii. line 730._
[614-2] See Byron, page 553.
[616-1] See Stoughton, page 266.
[616-2] Plymouth rock.
[616-3]
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
TENNYSON: _In Memoriam, i._
[616-4] Sir Francis Drake entered the harbour of Cadiz, April 19,
1587, and destroyed shipping to the amount of ten thousand tons
lading. To use his own expressive phrase, he had "singed the
Spanish king's beard."--KNIGHT: _Pictorial History of England,
vol. iii. p. 215._
[617-1] See Emerson, page 601.
[617-2]
Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,
Wer nicht die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.
GOETHE: _Wilhelm Meister, book ii. chap. xiii._
[618-1] Quoted from Cotton's "To-morrow." See Genesis xxx. 3.
[618-2] See Chaucer, page 5.
In omni adversitate fortunæ, infelicissimum genus est infortunii
fuisse felicem (In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy
is the most unhappy kind of misfortune).--BOETHIUS: _De
Consolatione Philosophiæ, liber ii._
This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall, line 75._
JOHN G. WHITTIER. 1807- ----.
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore;
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!
_Ichabod!_
Making their lives a prayer.
_To A. K. On receiving a Basket of Sea-Mosses._
And step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man.
_The Chapel of the Hermits._
For still the new transcends the old
In signs and tokens manifold;
Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,
With roots deep set in battle graves!
_The Chapel of the Hermits._
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his "Highland Mary!"
_Lines on Burns._
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
_Maud Muller._
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
_Snow Bound._
The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong.
_The Mantle of St. John de Matha._
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
_The Eternal Goodness._
SALMON P. CHASE. 1808-1873.
The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an
indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.
_Decision in Texas v. White, 7 Wallace, 725._
No more slave States; no slave Territories.
_Platform of the Free Soil National Convention, 1848._
The way to resumption is to resume.
_Letter to Horace Greeley, March 17, 1866._
SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH. 1808- ----.
My country, 't is of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain-side
Let freedom ring.
_National Hymn._
Our fathers' God, to thee;
Author of liberty,
To thee I sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by thy might,
Great God, our King!
_National Hymn._
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 1809-1861.
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!
_A Vision of Poets._
And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine.
_A Vision of Poets._
And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
The world was worthy of such men.
_A Vision of Poets._
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.
_A Vision of Poets. Conclusion._
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.
_Toll slowly._
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness His rest.
_Rhyme of the Duchess._
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
_Lady Geraldine's Courtship. xli._
But since he had
The genius to be loved, why let him have
The justice to be honoured in his grave.
_Crowned and buried. xxvii._
Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.
_To George Sand. A Desire._
By thunders of white silence.
_Hiram Power's Greek Slave._
And that dismal cry rose slowly
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit's melancholy
And eternity's despair;
And they heard the words it said,--
"Pan is dead! great Pan is dead!
Pan, Pan is dead!"[621-1]
_The Dead Pan._
Death forerunneth Love to win
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."
_Catarina to Camoens. ix._
She has seen the mystery hid
Under Egypt's pyramid:
By those eyelids pale and close
Now she knows what Rhamses knows.
_Little Mattie. Stanza ii._
But so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.
_Bianca among the Nightingales. xii._
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in 't.
_Aurora Leigh. Book ii._
The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.
_Aurora Leigh. Book v._
FOOTNOTES:
[621-1] Thamus . . . uttered with a loud voice his message, "The
great Pan is dead."--PLUTARCH: _Why the Oracles cease to give
Answers._
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1809-1865.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave
and half free.
_Speech, June 16, 1858._
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let
us dare to do our duty as we understand it.
_Address, New York City, Feb. 21, 1859._
In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the
free,--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
_Second Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862._
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.[622-1]
_Speech at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863._
With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right.[622-2]
_Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865._
FOOTNOTES:
[622-1] See Daniel Webster, page 532.
[622-2] See J. Q. Adams, page 458.
CHARLES DARWIN. 1809-1882.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.
_The Origin of Species. Chap. iii._
We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for
Existence.[622-3]
_The Origin of Species. Chap. iii._
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival
of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally
convenient.[622-4]
_The Origin of Species. Chap. iii._
FOOTNOTES:
[622-3] The perpetual struggle for room and food.--MALTHUS: _On
Population. chap. iii. p. 48_ (1798).
[622-4] This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to
express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called
"natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the
struggle for life."--HERBERT SPENCER: _Principles of Biology.
Indirect Equilibration._
ALFRED TENNYSON. 1809- ----.
(_From the edition of 1884._)
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.
_To the Queen._
And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons, when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet.
_To the Queen._
Broad based upon her people's will,
And compassed by the inviolate sea.
_To the Queen._
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
_Recollections of the Arabian Nights._
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
_The Poet._
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.
_The Two Voices. Stanza cxxvii._
Across the walnuts and the wine.
_The Miller's Daughter._
O love! O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.[623-1]
_Fatima. Stanza 3._
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,--
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
_OEnone._
Because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
_OEnone._
I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
_The Palace of Art._
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
_Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Stanza 5._
From yon blue heaven above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife[624-1]
Smile at the claims of long descent.
_Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Stanza 7._
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'T is only noble to be good.[624-2]
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
_Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Stanza 7._
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow 'll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,--
Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be queen o' the May.
_The May Queen._
Ah, why
Should life all labour be?
_The Lotus-Eaters. iv._
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.[624-3]
_A Dream of Fair Women. Stanza xxii._
God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.
_To J. S._
Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.
_To J. S._
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet!
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
_To J. S._
More black than ash-buds in the front of March.
_The Gardener's Daughter._
Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts;
Or all the same as if he had not been?
_Love and Duty._
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set, gray life, and apathetic end.
_Love and Duty._
Ah, when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?
_The Golden Year._
I am a part of all that I have met.[625-1]
_Ulysses._
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use,--
As tho' to breathe were life!
_Ulysses._
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
_Ulysses._
Here at the quiet limit of the world.
_Tithonus._
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
_Locksley Hall. Line 19._
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
_Locksley Hall. Line 33._
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
_Locksley Hall. Line 49._
This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.[626-1]
_Locksley Hall. Line 75._
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.
_Locksley Hall. Line 79._
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
_Locksley Hall. Line 94._
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels.
_Locksley Hall. Line 105._
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new.
_Locksley Hall. Line 117._
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.
_Locksley Hall. Line 137._
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
_Locksley Hall. Line 141._
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
_Locksley Hall. Line 168._
I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.
_Locksley Hall. Line 178._
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
_Locksley Hall. Line 182._
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
_Locksley Hall. Line 184._
I waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this.
_Godiva._
And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old.
_The Day-Dream. The Departure, i._
And o'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world she follow'd him.
_The Day-Dream. The Departure, iv._
We are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
_L'Envoi._
As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
_Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere._
For now the poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry.
_To ----, after reading a Life and Letters._
But oh for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
_Break, break, break._
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
_Break, break, break._
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
_The Brook._
Mastering the lawless science of our law,--
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances.
_Aylmer's Field._
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
_Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 4._
Oh good gray head which all men knew!
_Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 4._
That tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
_Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 4._
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gain'd a hundred fights,
And never lost an English gun.
_Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 6._
Not once or twice in our rough-island story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
_Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 8._
All in the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
_The Charge of the Light Brigade. Stanza 1._
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
_The Charge of the Light Brigade. Stanza 2._
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them.
. . . .
Into the jaws of death,[628-1]
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
_The Charge of the Light Brigade. Stanza 3._
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
_The Grandmother. Stanza 8._
O Love! what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!
_The Daisy. Stanza 1._
So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.
_The Daisy. Stanza 24._
Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.[629-1]
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.
_The Flower._
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne.
_Idylls of the King. Dedication._
It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
_Idylls of the King. Merlin and Vivien._
His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
_Idylls of the King. Launcelot and Elaine._
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
_The Passing of Arthur._
I am going a long way
With these thou seëst--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail or rain or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
_The Passing of Arthur._
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
_The Princess. Prologue. Line 141._
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she.
_The Princess. Part i. Line 153._
Jewels five-words-long,
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever.
_The Princess. Part ii. Line 355._
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
Blow, bugle! answer, echoes! dying, dying, dying.
_The Princess. Part iii. Line 352._
O Love! they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
And answer, echoes, answer! dying, dying, dying.
_The Princess. Part iii. Line 360._
There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.
_The Princess. Part iv. Line 1._
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
_The Princess. Part iv. Line 21._
Unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.
_The Princess. Part iv. Line 33._
Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,--
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
_The Princess. Part iv. Line 36._
Sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
_The Princess. Part vii. Line 203._
Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.
_The Princess. Part vii. Line 308._
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.
_Maud. Part i. ii._
That jewell'd mass of millinery,
That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull.
_Maud. Part i. vi. Stanza 6._
Gorgonized me from head to foot,
With a stony British stare.
_Maud. Part i. xiii. Stanza 2._
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown;
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone.
_Maud. Part i. xxii. Stanza 1._
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
_Maud. Part i. xxii. Stanza 9._
Ah, Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.
_Maud. Part ii. iv. Stanza 3._
Let knowledge grow from more to more.
_In Memoriam. Prologue. Line 25._
I held it truth, with him who sings[631-1]
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.[631-2]
_In Memoriam. i. Stanza 1._
But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.
_In Memoriam. v. Stanza 2._
Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
_In Memoriam. vi. Stanza 2._
And topples round the dreary west
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
_In Memoriam. xv. Stanza 5._
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.[632-1]
_In Memoriam. xviii. Stanza 1._
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing.[632-2]
_In Memoriam. xxi. Stanza 6._
The shadow cloak'd from head to foot.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 1._
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 2._
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 4._
'T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.[632-3]
_In Memoriam. xxvii. Stanza 4._
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.
_In Memoriam. xxxii. Stanza 1._
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
_In Memoriam. xxxiii. Stanza 1._
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
_In Memoriam. xlviii. Stanza 4._
Hold thou the good; define it well;
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
_In Memoriam. liii. Stanza 4._
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
_In Memoriam. liv. Stanza 1._
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
_In Memoriam. liv. Stanza 5._
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
_In Memoriam. lv. Stanza 2._
The great world's altar-stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God.
_In Memoriam. lv. Stanza 4._
Who battled for the True, the Just.
_In Memoriam. lvi. Stanza 5._
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance.
_In Memoriam. lxiv. Stanza 2._
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
_In Memoriam. lxiv. Stanza 3._
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
_In Memoriam. lxxiii. Stanza 1._
Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,
And while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world, which credits what is done,
Is cold to all that might have been.
_In Memoriam. lxxv. Stanza 4._
O last regret, regret can die!
_In Memoriam. lxxviii. Stanza 5._
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
_In Memoriam. xcvi. Stanza 3._
He seems so near, and yet so far.
_In Memoriam. xcvii. Stanza 6._
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 1._
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 2._
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 5._
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 7._
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand!
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 8._
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil'd with all ignoble use.
_In Memoriam. cxi. Stanza 6._
Some novel power
Sprang up forever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much
In watching thee from hour to hour.
_In Memoriam. cxii. Stanza 3._
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd,
In vassal tides that follow'd thought.
_In Memoriam. cxii. Stanza 4._
Wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
_In Memoriam. Conclusion. Stanza 10._
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
_In Memoriam. Conclusion. Stanza 36._
FOOTNOTES:
[623-1] See Marlowe, page 41.
[624-1] This line stands in Moxon's edition of 1842,--
"The gardener Adam and his wife,"--
and has been restored by the author in his edition of 1873.
[624-2] See Chapman, page 37.
[624-3] See Pope, page 340.
[625-1] See Byron, page 543.
[626-1] See Longfellow, page 618.
[628-1] Jaws of death.--SHAKESPEARE: _Twelfth Night, act iii. sc.
4._ DU BARTAS: _Weekes and Workes, day i. part 4._
[629-1] See Cowper, page 422.
[631-1] The poet alluded to is Goethe. I know this from Lord
Tennyson himself, although he could not identify the passage; and
when I submitted to him a small book of mine on his marvellous
poem, he wrote, "It is Goethe's creed," on this very
passage.--Rev. Dr. GETTY (vicar of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire).
[631-2] See Longfellow, page 616.
[632-1] See Shakespeare, page 144.
[632-2] I sing but as the linnet sings.--GOETHE: _Wilhelm Meister,
book ii. chap. xi._
[632-3] See Crabbe, page 444.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON). 1809-1885.
But on and up, where Nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills.
_Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube. Stanza 2._
Great thoughts, great feelings came to them,
Like instincts, unawares.
_The Men of Old._
A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet.
_The Men of Old._
I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,
The noisy wheel was still.
_The Brookside._
The beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
_The Brookside._
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 1809- ----.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
_Old Ironsides._
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
_Old Ironsides._
Like sentinel and nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green.
_The Cambridge Churchyard._
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
_The Last Leaf._
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
_The Last Leaf._
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
_To an Insect._
Their discords sting through Burns and Moore,
Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
_The Music-Grinders._
You think they are crusaders sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of sentiment
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody
And break the legs of Time.
_The Music-Grinders._
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.
_The Height of the Ridiculous._
When the last reader reads no more.
_The Last Reader._
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
_Poetry, a Metrical Essay._
'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow,
Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow.
_A Sentiment._
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
And when you stick on conversation's burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.
_Lines by a Clerk._
Where go the poet's lines?
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers!
_The Poet's Lot._
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
_The Voiceless._
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses!
_The Voiceless._
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
_The Chambered Nautilus._
His home! the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck, the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,--never mind it.
_A Good Time going._
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
_A Good Time going._
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he 's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
_The Boys._
Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels
When the tired player shuffles off the buskin;
A page of Hood may do a fellow good
After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.
_How not to settle it._
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred
times.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on
the railroad tracks.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal
better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
There is that glorious epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the
historian,[637-1] in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the
luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To
this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the
wittiest of men:[638-1] "Good Americans when they die go to
Paris."
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You could n't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crow-bar.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor
its great scholars great men.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Knowledge and timber should n't be much used till they are
seasoned.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The hat is the _ultimum moriens_ of respectability.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. viii._
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and
hopeful than to be forty years old.
_On the Seventieth Birthday of Julia Ward Howe_ (_May 27, 1889_).
FOOTNOTES:
[637-1] John Lothrop Motley.
Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and
happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those
necessary things."--PLUTARCH: _On the Love of Wealth._
[638-1] Thomas G. Appleton.
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1809- ----.
Our Country,--whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine,
or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the
measurements more or less,--still our Country, to be cherished in
all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
_Toast at Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July, 1845._
A star for every State, and a State for every star.
_Address on Boston Common in 1862._
There are no points of the compass on the chart of true
patriotism.
_Letter to Boston Commercial Club in 1879._
The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that
mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want
exasperated into crime.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half
completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands
are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the
States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the
dignity of the elective franchise,--all alike demand that the
still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken,
and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
JAMES ALDRICH. 1810-1856.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.
_A Death-Bed._
But when the sun in all his state
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory's morning-gate,
And walked in Paradise.
_A Death-Bed._
THEODORE PARKER. 1810-1860.
There is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea demands,
as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,--that is, a
government of all the people, by all the people, for all the
people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal
justice, the unchanging law of God. For shortness' sake I will
call it the idea of Freedom.[639-1]
_Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850._
FOOTNOTES:
[639-1] See Daniel Webster, page 532.
EDMUND H. SEARS. 1810-1876.
Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven's melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.
_Christmas Song._
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old.
_The Angels' Song._
MARTIN F. TUPPER. 1810-1889.
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure.
_Of Education._
God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love.
_Of Immortality._
EDGAR A. POE. 1811-1849.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,--
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
_The Raven._
Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster.
_The Raven._
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
_The Raven._
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--Nevermore!
_The Raven._
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
_To Helen._
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1811-1884.
Revolutions are not made; they come.
_Speech, Jan. 28, 1852._
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
_Speech, Dec. 21, 1855._
One on God's side is a majority.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Revolutions never go backward.
_Speech, Feb. 12, 1861._
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. 1811- ----.
A sacred burden is this life ye bear:
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly.
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
_Lines addressed to the Young Gentlemen leaving the Lenox Academy, Mass._
Better trust all, and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart, that if believed
Had blessed one's life with true believing.
_Faith._
BARTHOLOMEW DOWLING.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
'T is all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already,--
Hurrah for the next that dies![641-1]
_Revelry in India._
FOOTNOTES:
[641-1] This quatrain appears with variations in several stanzas.
"The poem," says Mr. Rossiter Johnson in "Famous Single and
Fugitive Poems," "is persistently attributed to Alfred Domett; but
in a letter to me, Feb. 6, 1879, he says: 'I did not write that
poem, and was never in India in my life. I am as ignorant of the
authorship as you can be.'"
ALFRED DOMETT. 1811- ----.
It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.
_Christmas Hymn._
JULIA A. FLETCHER (NOW MRS. CARNEY).
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
So the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity.
_Little Things, 1845._
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
_Little Things, 1845._
AUSTEN H. LAYARD. ---- -1894.
I have always believed that success would be the inevitable
result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play,
and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.[642-1]
_Speech in Parliament, Jan. 15, 1855._[642-2]
FOOTNOTES:
[642-1] See Sydney Smith, page 461.
[642-2] This speech is reported in Hansard's Parliamentary
Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077.
ROBERT BROWNING. 1812-1890.
Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.
_Sordello. Book vi._
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,--what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
Are there not, dear Michal,
Two points in the adventure of the diver,--
One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge;
One, when a prince he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
_Paracelsus. Part ii._
The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
To their first fault, and withered in their pride.
_Paracelsus. Part iv._
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
_Paracelsus. Part v._
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man as yet.
_Paracelsus. Part v._
Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this ye call
A "great event" should come to pass
From that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
_Pippa Passes. Introduction._
God 's in his heaven:
All 's right with the world.
_Pippa Passes. Part i._
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,--
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
_Pippa Passes. Part ii._
In the morning of the world,
When earth was nigher heaven than now.
_Pippa Passes. Part iii._
All service ranks the same with God,--
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
_Pippa Passes. Part iv._
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,--the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,--Nature's good
And God's.
_A Soul's Tragedy. Act i._
Ever judge of men by their professions. For though the bright
moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet
if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it,
and know the man by it, I say,--not by his performance; which is
half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its
accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's
own. I judge people by what they might be,--not are, nor will be.
_A Soul's Tragedy. Act ii._
There 's a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the purest.
_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Act i. Sc. iii._
When is man strong until he feels alone?
_Colombe's Birthday. Act iii._
When the fight begins within himself,
A man 's worth something.
_Men and Women. Bishop Blougram's Apology._
The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.
_Cleon._
And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.
_Cleon._
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs;
And Æschylus, because we read his plays!
_Cleon._
Rafael made a century of sonnets.
_One Word More. ii._
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
_One Word More. xii._
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,--one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
_One Word More. xvii._
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
_One Word More. xix._
The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.
_Count Gismond. xiii._
Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.
_Count Gismond. xix._
Just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!
_Instans Tyrannus. vii._
Oh never star
Was lost here but it rose afar.
_Waring. ii._
Sing, riding 's a joy! For me I ride.
_The last Ride together. vii._
When the liquor 's out, why clink the cannikin?
_The Flight of the Duchess. xvi._
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,--
His hundred 's soon hit;
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That has the world here--should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
_A Grammarian's Funeral._
Lofty designs must close in like effects.
_A Grammarian's Funeral._
I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,
For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test
As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment's view!
. . . . . .
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin;
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
_The Statue and the Bust._
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. xxxiii._
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
_The Lost Leader. i._
We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.
_The Lost Leader. ii._
They are perfect; how else?--they shall never change:
We are faulty; why not?--we have time in store.
_Old Pictures in Florence. xvi._
What 's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
_Old Pictures in Florence. xvii._
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais):
"Open my heart, and you will see
Graved inside of it 'Italy.'"
_De Gustibus. ii._
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.
_Home-Thoughts from Abroad. ii._
God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
_Saul. vi._
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
_Saul. ix._
'T is not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do.
_Saul. xvii._
O woman-country![647-1] wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead.
_By the Fireside. vi._
That great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.
_By the Fireside. xxiii._
If two lives join, there is oft a scar.
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
_By the Fireside. xlvi._
Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
_Two in the Campagna. xii._
Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.
_Women and Roses._
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
_After._
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!
_Memorabilia. i._
He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.
_Luria. Act ii._
And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,
Is quick and transient,--comes, and lo! is gone,
While Northern thought is slow and durable.
_Luria. Act v._
A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.
_Luria. Act v._
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
_In a Balcony._
Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
_Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours._
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.
_Abt Vogler. ix._
Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
_Rabbi Ben Ezra._
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me.
_Rabbi Ben Ezra._
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
_Rabbi Ben Ezra._
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
_A Death in the Desert._
The body sprang
At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,--no!
_A Death in the Desert._
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
_A Death in the Desert._
For I say this is death and the sole death,--
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.
_A Death in the Desert._
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts: God is, they are;
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
_A Death in the Desert._
The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!
_A Death in the Desert._
How sad and bad and mad it was!
But then, how it was sweet!
_Confessions. ix._
So may a glory from defect arise.
_Deaf and Dumb._
This could but have happened once,--
And we missed it, lost it forever.
_Youth and Art. xvii._
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face.
. . . . . . .
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old;
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.
_Prospice._
It 's wiser being good than bad;
It 's safer being meek than fierce;
It 's fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That after Last returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.
_Apparent Failure. vii._
In the great right of an excessive wrong.
_The Ring and the Book. The other Half-Rome. Line 1055._
Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.
_The Ring and the Book. Pompilia. Line 357._
The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.
_The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 590._
Of what I call God,
And fools call Nature.
_The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 1073._
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?
_The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 1185._
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
Life's business being just the terrible choice.
_The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 1236._
It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,--to mouths like mine, at least.
_The Book and the Ring. The Pope. Line 842._
Thy[651-1] rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.
_The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 873._
But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?
_Balaustion's Adventure._
Better have failed in the high aim, as I,
Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,--
As, God be thanked! I do not.
_The Inn Album. iv._
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I 'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
_At the "Mermaid." Stanza 10._
"With this same key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart"[652-1] once more!
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
_House. x._
God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency.[652-2]
_Cenciaja._
FOOTNOTES:
[647-1] Italy.
[651-1] Mrs. Browning.
[652-1] See Wordsworth, page 485.
[652-2] See Herbert, page 206.
CHARLES DICKENS. 1812-1870.
A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body!
_Nicholas Nickleby. Chap. xxxiv._
My life is one demd horrid grind.
_Nicholas Nickleby. Chap. lxiv._
In a Pickwickian sense.
_Pickwick Papers. Chap. i._
Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the ivy green.
_Pickwick Papers. Chap. vi._
He 's tough, ma'am,--tough is J. B.; tough and devilish sly.
_Dombey and Son. Chap. vii._
When found, make a note of.
_Dombey and Son. Chap. xv._
The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.
_Dombey and Son. Chap. xxiii._
Barkis is willin'.
_David Copperfield. Chap. v._
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, all very good words
for the lips,--especially prunes and prism.
_Little Dorrit. Book ii. Chap. v._
Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was
beforehand with all the public departments in the art of
perceiving HOW NOT TO DO IT.
_Little Dorrit. Book ii. Chap. x._
In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.
_Christmas Carol. Stave 2._
CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH. 1813- ----.
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
_Stanzas._
We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.
_Stanzas._
F. W. FABER. 1814-1863.
For right is right, since God is God,[653-1]
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
_The Right must win._
Labour itself is but a sorrowful song,
The protest of the weak against the strong.
_The Sorrowful World._
FOOTNOTES:
[653-1] See Crabbe, page 444.
CHARLES MACKAY. 1814- ----.
Cleon hath a million acres,--ne'er a one have I;
Cleon dwelleth in a palace,--in a cottage I.
_Cleon and I._
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
_Eternal Justice. Stanza 4._
Aid the dawning, tongue and pen;
Aid it, hopes of honest men!
_Clear the Way._
Some love to roam o'er the dark sea's foam,
Where the shrill winds whistle free.
_Some love to roam._
There 's a good time coming, boys!
A good time coming.
_The Good Time coming._
Old Tubal Cain was a man of might
In the days when earth was young.
_Tubal Cain._
ELLEN STURGIS HOOPER. 1816-1841.
I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.
_Life a Duty._
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. 1816- ----.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
Life 's but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things,--God.
_Festus. Scene, A Country Town._
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
_Scene, Another and a Better World._
America! half-brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land.
_Scene, The Surface._
ELIZA COOK. 1817- ----.
I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that old arm-chair?
_The Old Arm-Chair._
How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When memory plays an old tune on the heart!
_Old Dobbin._
NATHANIEL P. WILLIS. 1817-1867.
At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand
of the city.[655-1]
_Necessity for a Promenade Drive._
For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.
_Saturday Afternoon._
It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.
_The Month of June._
Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him!
Not for him who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him who ascended Fame's ladder so high
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky.
_The Death of Harrison._
FOOTNOTES:
[655-1] See Haliburton, page 580.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 1817- ----.
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me;
If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.
_A Poet's Hope._
I sing New England, as she lights her fire
In every Prairie's midst; and where the bright
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night,
She still is there, the guardian on the tower,
To open for the world a purer hour.
_New England._
Most joyful let the Poet be;
It is through him that all men see.
_The Poet of the Old and New Times._
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1819-1891.
Earth's noblest thing,--a woman perfected.
_Irené._
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
_Sonnet iv._
Great truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of eternity.
_Sonnet vi._
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
_Sonnet xxv._
Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,--
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.
_Sonnet xxxiv._ (_Ed. 1844._)
All thoughts that mould the age begin
Deep down within the primitive soul.
_An Incident in a Railroad Car._
It may be glorious to write
Thoughts that shall glad the two or three
High souls, like those far stars that come in sight
Once in a century.
_An Incident in a Railroad Car._
No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.
_A Glance behind the Curtain._
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak.
. . . . .
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
_Stanzas on Freedom._
Endurance is the crowning quality,
And patience all the passion of great hearts.
_Columbus._
One day with life and heart
Is more than time enough to find a world.
_Columbus._
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right;
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
_The Present Crisis._
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
_The Present Crisis._
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
_The Present Crisis._
Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
_On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington._
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.
_To the Dandelion._
This child is not mine as the first was;
I cannot sing it to rest;
I cannot lift it up fatherly,
And bless it upon my breast.
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she 's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.
_The Changeling._
The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment.
_Longing._
She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.
_My Love. iv._
Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.
_The Vision of Sir Launfal. Prelude to Part First._
'T is heaven alone that is given away;
'T is only God may be had for the asking.
_The Vision of Sir Launfal.
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