Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries;
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has
made:

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home:
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

WALLER: Old Age and Death.

When God the new-made world survey'd,
His word pronounced the building good;
Sunbeams and light the heav'ns array'd,

And the whole earth was crown'd with food.

Colours that charm and ease the eye,
His pencil spread all nature round;
With pleasing blue he arch'd the sky,
And a green carpet dress'd the ground.

Let envious atheists ne'er complain

That nature wants or skill or care;
But turn their eyes all round in vain,
T' avoid their Maker's goodness there.

DR. ISAAC WATTS: Miscell. Thoughts.

No good of worth sublime will heaven permit
To light on man as from the passing air;
The lamp of genius, though by nature lit,
If not protected, pruned, and fed with care,
Soon dies, or runs to waste with fitful glare;
And learning is a plant that spreads and towers
Slow as Columbia's aloe, proudly rare,
That 'mid gay thousands, with the suns and
showers

Of half a century, grows alone before it flowers.
CARLOS WILCOX: Cure for Melancholy.

When the fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.
WORDSWORTH.

The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away,—a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,—
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune:

It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less for-
lorn,

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
WORDSWORTH:

The World is Too Much With Us.
Would the world now adopt me for her heir;
Would beauty's queen entitle me "
The fair;"
Fame speak me Fortune's minion; could I vie
Angels with India; with a speaking eye
Command bare heads, bow'd knees, strike jus-

tice dumb,

As well as blind and lame, or give a tongue
To stones by epitaphs; be call'd Great Master
In the loose rhymes of every poetaster;
Could I be more than any man that lives,
Great, fair, rich, wise, all in superlatives,
Yet I more freely would these gifts resign
Than ever Fortune should have made them

mine,

And hold one minute of this holy leisure
Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure.
SIR HENRY WOTTON.

The wearisome, lone, and monotonous lot,
Where To-day's as the day that is gone,
Where To-morrow brings nothing To-day has

not,

Nor evening the hopes of the morn,—
Oh, even here, in the loneliest hours,
Are there lying some fair but neglected flowers.
CHARLOTTE YOUNG: Every-Day Heroes.
Through all the changes of unnumber'd years

I've roll'd around the life-bestowing sun;
Yet still each season fresh and bright appears
As when my onward course was first begun!
Spring with its new-born beauty does not
shun,

Awakening as of old the sleeping earth;

And Summer in its brightness loseth none
Of all its early loveliness and worth,
Still blooms the flower, and glows the ripen'd
fruit,

And through the ground the tender leaflets
shoot.

And yet, alas! I long have been misnamed

A desert wilderness,—a worthless clod;
And man, vain man, is not a whit ashamed
Thus to abuse the bounty of his God,
And say that, till he rests beneath the sod,

There's nothing worthy of his noble thought,
But, day by day, he still must toil and plod,
And seek, but never find the object sought;
And me he calls a waste, a fleeting show,-
A dismal charnel-house for man below.
CHARLOTTE YOUNG: The World's Complaint. |
The world, where lucky throws to blockheads
fall;

Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all!
YOUNG.

A world where lust of pleasure, grandeur, gold,
Three demons that divide its realms between
them,

With strokes alternate buffet to and fro

Man's restless heart, their sport, their flying ball,
Till, with the giddy circle sick and tired,
It pants for peace, and drops into despair.
YOUNG: Night Thoughts.

The world's infectious: few bring back at eve
Immaculate the manners of the morn.
Something we thought, is blotted; we resolved,
Is shaken; we renounced, returns again.
YOUNG: Night Thoughts.

What is this world! Thy school, O misery!
Our only lesson is to learn to suffer;
And he who know not that was born for no-

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends:
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,-Love,
and Light,

And calm Thoughts, regular as infant's breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day or
night,-

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
S. T. COLERIDGE.

There is a joy in worth,

A high, mysterious, soul-pervading charm, Which, never daunted, ever bright and warm, Mocks at the idle, shadowy ills of earth, Amid the gloom is bright, and tranquil in the

storm.

It asks, it needs no aid;

It makes the proud and lofty soul its throne:
There, in its self-created heaven, alone,
No fear to shake, no memory to upbraid,
It sits a lesser God,-life, life is all its own!
The Stoic was not wrong:

There is no evil to the virtuous brave;
Or in the battle's rift, or on the wave,
Worshipp'd or scorn'd, alone or mid the throng,
He is himself-a man! not life's nor fortune's
slave.

Power, and wealth, and fame,

Are but as weeds upon life's troubled tide:
Give me but these,—a spirit tempest-tried,
A brow unshrinking, and a soul of flame,
The joy of conscious worth, its courage and
its pride!

ROBERT T. CONRAD: Pride of Worth.
We see, though order'd for the best,
Permitted laurels grace the lawless brow,
Th' unworthy raised, the worthy cast below.
DRYDEN.

due:

DRYDEN.

Oh that simplicity and innocence
Its own unvalued work so seldom knows!
GOETHE: Translated by SHELLEY.

Nor are we ignorant how noble minds
Suffer too much through those indignities
Which times and vicious persons cast on them.
Ourself have ever vowed to esteem
As virtue for itself, so fortune, base;
Who's first in worth, the same be first in place.
BEN JONSON.

Oh! wouldst thou set thy rank before thyself?
Wouldst thou be honour'd for thyself or that?
Rank that excels the wearer doth degrade,
Riches impoverish that divide respect:
Oh, to be cherish'd for one's self alone!

To owe the love which cleaves to us to nought
Which fortune's summer- -winter-gives or

takes!

J. SHERIDAN KNOWLES.

Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
"What differs more," you cry, "than crown
and cowl?"

I'll tell you, friend!—a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather and prunella.

POPE. What can ennoble fools, and sots, and cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

WRONG.

And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.
BYRON: Mazeppa.

A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn:
To scorn to owe a duty overlong;
To scorn to be for benefits forborne;

To scorn to lie, to scorn to do a wrong;
To scorn to bear an injury in mind;
To scorn a free-born heart slavelike to bind.
But if for wrongs we needs revenge must have,
Then be our vengeance of the noblest kind;
Do we his body from our fury save,

And let our hate prevail against our mind? What can 'gainst him á greater vengeance be, Than make his foe more worthy far than he? LADY ELIZABETH CAREW: Revenge of Injuries. Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,— Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick, with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. Cowper.

They ever do pretend To have received a wrong, who wrong intend.

DANIEL.

Wrongs do not leave off there where they begin,
But still beget new mischiefs in their course.
DANIEL.

Alas! how bitter are the wrongs of love!
Life has no other sorrow so acute;
For love is made of every fine emotion,
Of generous impulses and noble thoughts;
It looketh to the stars, and dreams of heaven;
It nestles 'mid the flowers, and sweetens earth.
Love is aspiring, yet is humble too;

It doth exalt another o'er itself,

With sweet heart-homage, which delights to raise

That which it worships, yet is fain to win
The idol to its lone and lowly home

Of deep affection. 'Tis an utter wreck

When such hopes perish. From that moment,

life

Has in its depths a well of bitterness

For which there is no healing.

L. E. LANDON: The Wrongs of Love.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on You may stretch your hands out towards me,

the throne.

Ah! you will-I know not when:I shall nurse my love and keep it Faithfully for you till then.

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER: Fidelis.

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.

ROCHESTER: Epistle to Edward Howard.
To persist

In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy.

YOUTH.

The stars shall fade away: But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. ADDISON: Cato.

Oh, time was young, and life was warm,
When first I saw that fairy form,
Her dark hair tossing in the storm;
And fast and free these pulses play'd,
When last I met that gentle maid,-
When last her hand in mine was laid.

And now I faint with grief; my fate draws Those locks of jet are turn'd to gray,

nigh;

In all the pride of blooming youth I die.

ADDISON: Ovid.

O, give me back once more,

O, give me, Lord, one hour of youth again!
For in that time I was serene and bold,
And uncontaminate, and enraptured with
The universe. I did not know the pangs
Of the proud mind, nor the sweet miseries
Of love; and I had never gather'd yet,
After those fires so sweet in burning, bitter
Handfuls of ashes, that, with tardy tears
Sprinkled, at last have nourish'd into bloom
The solitary flower of penitence.

From the Italian of ALEARDO ALEARDI:
Translated by HOWELLS.

And she is strange and far away,
That might have been mine own to-day,—

That might have been mine own, my dear,
Through many and many a happy year
That might have sat beside me here.
Ay, changeless through the changing scene,
The ghostly whisperings between,
The dark refrain of “might have been!"
The race is o'er I might have run,
The deeds are past I might have done,
And sere the wreath I might have won.

Sunk is the last faint flickering blaze:
The vision of departed days
Is vanish'd even as I gaze.

701

The pictures with their ruddy light
Are changed to dust and ashes white,
And I am left alone with night.

All the Year Round: "Faces in the Fire."

In the depth of an ancient casement,

Looking unto the west,

A little maiden sat and read

In the evening's golden rest.

And her bright brain teem'd with fancies

Of spiritual things,

Of breadths of silent, starry skies,
Whiten'd with angels' wings,

And fields of blowing lilies,

Radiant within the dawn,

With the branches of the tree of life
Shadowing field and lawn.

For the thin and tiny volume
Was rich with fairy lore,
And kindled her chiming fancies
As she turn'd the leaflets o'er,

Reading of knights and ladies,
Who walk'd in the forests old,
Bright as the morning planet
Ere gather'd to its fold.

And the chamber walls grew lustrous,
And the furnaced depths of fire,
That flamed on the red horizon,
Were fill'd with dome, and spire,

And minarets, from out whose tops
The bells of heaven blew
Such harmonies and melodies

That thrill'd her through and through.
All the Year Round: "Changes."

Children, who gather common flowers at will,

And leave them, withering, on the path to lie, Dream not that sprites, in pain, cling to them still,

And cannot wander till the moon is high; When evening's hush is felt on hill and dell, The fairies of all flowers round them meet, And charm the night with tones ineffable, And circle o'er the grass with glimmering feet.

The fairies, gather'd round, with pity view

The broken flowers lying helplessly,

And trick out the crush'd leaves with diamond

dew;

But when the moon is high, the sprites are free.

But now the young and fresh imagination

Finds traces of their presence everywhere, And peoples with a new and bright creation

The clear blue chambers of the sunny air.
For them the gate of many a fairy palace
Opes to the ringing bugle of the bee,
And every flower-cup is a golden chalice,
Wine-fill'd, in some grand elfin revelry.

Quaint little eyes from grassy nooks are peering;
Each dewy leaf is rich in magic lore;
The foam-bells down the merry brooklet steer-
ing

Are fairy-freighted to some happier shore.

All the Year Round: "Fairy Lore." Stern theorists, with wisdom overreaching

The aim of wisdom, in your precepts cold, And with a painful stress of callous teaching That withers the young heart into the old, What is the gain if all their flowers were perish'd,

Their vision-fields forever shorn and bare, The mirror shatter'd that their young faith cher

ish'd,

Showing the face of things so very fair?

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Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson: With Copious ..., Volume 1873