"I have a steed, to leave behind The wild bird, and the wilder wind : I have a sword, which does not know How to waste a second blow : I have a matchlock, whose red breath Bears the lightning’s sudden death ; I have a foot of fiery flight, I have an eye that cleaves the night. I win my portion in the land By my high heart and strong right hand."

"We have no home—we have no friends, They said our home no more was ours ; Our cottage where the ash tree bends, The garden we had filled with flowers. . . . . Alas, it is a weary thing To sing our ballads o’er and o’er ; The songs we used at home to sing— Alas, we have a home no more !"

"Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground ; Not in your sculptured rise In the real exercise Of human nature's highest power found. ’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil, ’Tis in the gifted line, In each far thought divine, That brings down heaven to light our common soil. ’Tis in the great, the lovely, and the true, ’Tis in the generous thought, Of all that man has wrought, Of all that yet remains for man to do."

"Abel the victim—Cain the homicide, Were type and prophecy Of times that were to be, Thus reddened from the first life’s troubled tide."

"History hath but few pages—soon is told Man’s ordinary life, Labour, and care, and strife, Make up the constant chronicle of old."

"The morning waked with carols, A young and joyous hand Of small and rosy songsters, Came tripping hand in hand. And sang beneath our windows, Just as the round red sun Began to melt the hoar-frost, And the clear cold day begun."

"For the East is earth’s first-born, And hath a glorious dower As Nature there had lavished Her beauty and her power."

"How much they suffer from our faults ! How much from our mistakes ! How often, too, mistaken zeal An infant’s misery makes ! We overrule, and overteach, We curb and we confine, And put the heart to school too soon, To learn our narrow line."

"How little is the happiness That will content a child— A favourite dog, a sunny fruit, A blossom growing wild. A word will fill the little heart With pleasure and with pride ; It is a harsh, a cruel thing, That such can be denied."

"Round the Pantheon’s height was wrought A web of royal red ; A glory as if morning brought Its homage to the dead. And Notre Dame’s old gothic towers Were bathed in roseate bloom, As Time himself had scattered flowers Over that mighty tomb."

"Fair Paris caught the crimson hue — Well may I call it fair. With its pure heaven of softest blue. Its clear and sunny air — Soft fell the morning o’er each dome That rises mid the sky ; And, conscious of the day to come, Demand their place on high."

"The poet’s lovely faith creates The beauty it believes The light which on his footstep waits He from himself receives."

"I deeply felt that song should make One universal link, Uniting, for each other’s sake, All those who feel and think."

"Thou lone and lovely water, would I were A dweller by thy deepest solitude !"

"It is a glorious task to seek, Where misery droops the patient head : Where tears are on the widow’s cheek, Where weeps the mourner o’er the dead."

"’Tis the worst curse, on this our social world, Fortune’s perpetual presence—wealth, which now Is like life’s paramount necessity."

"Alas ! hope is not prophecy,—we dream, But rarely does the glad fulfilment come : We leave our land and we return no more; Or come again, the weary and the worn."

"People ought to be grateful : I have done a great deal for the poets ; is there not one among them to do something for me ? I entreat them to recollect that I have read them, which is a great deal ; I have bought them, which is still more ; and I have reduced their theory to practice, which is most of all. They owe me a recompense, and I have a plan in my head. I want one of them to come and commit suicide in my garden, and leave a paper behind requesting to be interred in that very spot. He might assign any reason his imagination suggested, and I would take care that religious attention should be paid to his last wish ; indeed, it is for that I desire his death."

"Ah ! if this old charm were sooth, One wish yet might tax its truth I would ask, however vain, Never more to wish again."

"They were more wise in other days; Then turn’d the hermit to his cell, And left a world where all betrays, Apart with his own thoughts to dwell."

"— good news stops to take breath on the road ; bad news never requires it."

"One goes out visiting for pleasure ; a fallacy belonging to that melancholy mania for change which has recourse to stage-coaches, and steam-boats, as if change of scene were change of self."

"Hope and Love are the passions of the heart; the difference between them is, that Hope does not come to an end, but Love does. Love has two terminations ; it concludes either in profound indifference, or in intense hate. Now, in the general run of human natures, there is not energy enough for hate ; therefore, the usual finale is profound indifference ; the most insipid state of existence that can be devised."

"I wonder where Experience got its reputation ? — it has been very easily obtained — but it does not deserve it : they say, that it teaches fools ; it may teach them, but they do not learn."

"Now, a love match is like that childish toy which consists of various boxes enclosed one within another, and yet contains nothing, after all."

"There are very many devices wherewith we delude ourselves — indeed, human life has never seemed to me any thing more than a series of mistakes. It is a mistake to be born — another to live — and a third to die."

"I know not how it acts on other minds, But this I know, my most enchanted world Is hidden when the curtain falls, and leaves Remembrance only of its gorgeous dreams And beautiful creations."

"O ! glorious triumph, thus to sway at will All feelings in our nature ; thus to work The springs of sympathy, the mines of thought, And all the deep emotions of the heart."

"Out upon morning, its hours recall, Earth to its trouble, man to his thrall; Out upon morning, it chases the night, With all the sweet dreams that on slumber alight; Out upon morning, which wakes us to life, With its toil, its repining, its sorrow and strife."

"The heart it has a weary task Which unrequited love must keep; At once a treasure and a curse, The shadow on its universe. Alas, for young and wasted years, For long nights only spent in tears; For hopes, like lamps in some dim urn, That but for the departed burn."

"The Ganges’ quiet waves are rolled In one broad sheet of molten gold; And in the tufted brakes beside, The water-fowls and herons hide. And the still earth might also seem The strange creation of a dream."

"We might have been !—these are but common words, And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;"

"The moonlight falleth lovely over earth ; And strange, indeed, must be the mind of man That can resist its beautiful reproach. How can hate work like fever in the soul With such entire tranquillity around? Evil must be our nature to refuse Such gentle intercession."

"'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words ! Life is in them, and death. A word can send The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek, Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn The current cold and deadly to the heart. Anger and fear are in them ; grief and joy Are on their sound ; yet slight, impalpable:— A word is but a breath of passing air."

"Where is the heart that has not bowed A slave, eternal Love, to thee? Look on the cold, the gay, the proud, And is there one among them free !"

"It is a fearful trust, the trust of love. In fear, not hope, should woman's heart receive A guest so terrible."

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: I lay it down as a rule, the truth of which all experience confirms, that every man behaves as ill as he possibly can to every woman, under every possible circumstance ! … What man has the slightest scruple as to gaining the confidence ; making himself not only necessary to her happiness, but that very happiness itself; and then sacrificing her to vanity, caprice, or any slight motive, that would not be held valid for one moment in any other matter !"

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: The lover and the physician are each popular from the same cause—we talk to them of nothing but ourselves; I dare say that was the origin of confession—egotism, under the fine name of religion."

"There are times when the poet marvels how he ever wrote, and feels as if he never could write again."

"Few know the demands made by the imagination on those who are once its masters and its victims. Its exercise is so feverish, and so exciting ; the cheek burns, the pulse beats aloud, the whole frame trembles with eagerness during the progress of composition. For the time you are what you create. The exhaustion of this process is not felt till some other species of exertion makes its demand on the already overwrought frame, the overstrained nerves begin to discover that they have been wound to the utmost. There is no strength left to bear life's other emotions."

"It is a weary and a bitter hour When first the real disturbs the poet's world, And he distrusts the future. Not for that Should cold despondency weigh down the soul It is a glorious gift, bright poetry, And should be thankfully and nobly used. Let it look up to heaven !"

"But there always is in my mind something at once ludicrous and mournful in a crowd congregated for the purpose of amusement. What discontent, what vanity, move the complicated wheels of the social machine! There are many pleasures that one can comprehend, and even go the length of admitting, that they are worth some trouble in endeavouring to obtain; but the mania of filling your house with guests of whom you know little, and for whom you care nothing, is only less incomprehensible than why they should be at the trouble of coming to you."

"Who ever said one-half of all that seemed in absence so easy to say ?"

"Life is made up of vanities — so small, So mean, the common history of the day, — That mockery seems the sole philosophy. Then some stern truth starts up — cold, sudden, strange; And we are taught what life is by despair : — The toys, the trifles, and the petty cares, Melt into nothingness — we know their worth ; The heart avenges every careless thought, And makes us feel that fate is terrible."

"… if there be one torture which the demons, who delight in human misery, might, rejoice to inflict, it is the anxious suspense of love acting upon an imaginative temperament. It is extraordinary the power of creation with which the mind seems suddenly endowed, and only to suppose the worst. Death, sickness, crime, misfortune,—these are the images which start upon the solitude made fearful with their presence."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s journal]: Will the time ever come, when men will feel that the mind and the heart must work in concert, and that we must look around and afar for our happiness ; that our great mistake has been, the narrow circle to which we are content to limit good ?"

"... old bachelors are fond of young girls, under the idea that they can manage them the best"

"... everybody was much more pleased than people are in general with any lions, who are also exotics, to whom they condescend to be attentive, but refuse to be friendly; rejoicing when any little conventional informality reduces the genius, whose patent of nobility the Creator himself has bestowed, below the level of fashion, and substituting ridicule for admiration, the smile of the scorner for the approval of veneration."