All Quotes

"Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! So, I was afraid!"

"Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all! Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men."

"Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!""

"Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?"

"All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."

"Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure."

"Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup."

"Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men."

"So, take, and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore: Prime nature with an added artistry — No carat lost, and you have gained a ring. What of it? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say; A thing's sign: now for the thing signified."

"A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since. Give it me back! The thing's restorative I'the touch and sight."

"A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?"

"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart— When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory — to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!"

"Go practise if you please With men and women: leave a child alone For Christ's particular love's sake!"

"In the great right of an excessive wrong."

"Was never evening yet But seemed far beautifuller than its day."

"Forgive me this digression — that I stand Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak O' the business, when the Count's good angel bade "Put up thy sword, born enemy to the ear, "And let Law listen to thy difference!" And Law does listen and compose the strife, Settle the suit, how wisely and how well! On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault, Law bends a brow maternally severe, Implies the worth of perfect chastity, By fancying the flaw she cannot find."

"Oh child that didst despise thy life so much When it seemed only thine to keep or lose, How the fine ear felt fall the first low word "Value life, and preserve life for My sake!""

"What wonder if the novel claim had clashed With old requirement, seemed to supersede Too much the customary law? But, brave, Thou at first prompting of what I call God, And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend, Accept the obligation laid on thee, Mother elect, to save the unborn child, As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from the Ever Living: — didst resist — Anticipate the office that is mine — And with his own sword stay the upraised arm, The endeavour of the wicked, and defend Him who, — again in my default, — was there For visible providence: one less true than thou To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right, Approved less far in all docility To all instruction, — how had such an one Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?""

"The curious crime, the fine Felicity and flower of wickedness."

"Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?"

"White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice."

"Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!"

"It is the glory and good of Art That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least."

"Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) Linking our England to his Italy."

"The sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea."

"When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?"

"The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say."

"Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years."

"Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat."

"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."

"They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store."

"What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven; Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes."

"O woman-country! wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead."

"That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it."

"If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far."

"Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace."

"And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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!"

"What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me."

"How sad and bad and mad it was! But then, how it was sweet!"

"So may a glory from defect arise."

"This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever."