"Forgive me, masters of the mind! At whose behest I long ago So much unlearnt, so much resign'd — I come not here to be your foe! I seek these anchorites, not in ruth, To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak! But as, on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek In pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen Runic stone — For both were faiths, and both are gone."

"Of these two literatures, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge — theology, philosophy, history, art, science — to see the object as in itself it really is."

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn."

"his head droop’d low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay—"

"And youth and bloom, and this delightful world."

"So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead. And the great Rustum drew his horseman’s cloak Down o’er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-rear’d By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now, mid their broken flights of steps, Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side — So in the sand lay Rustum by his son."

"... the salt blue sea."

"But the majestic River floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there mov’d, Rejoicing, through the hush’s Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon: he flow’d Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunjè, Brimming, and bright, and large: then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles — Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil’d circuitous wanderer:—till at last The long’d-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath’d stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea."

"The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject."

"for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away — Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind."

"They follow’d me, my hope, my fame, my star."

"as the vast tide Of the bright rocking Ocean sets to shore At the full moon."

"his own early youth, And all its bounding rapture"

"and all the pleasant life they led, They three, in that long-distant summer-time — The castle and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan."

"No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pain'd desert-lion, who all day Hath trail'd the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand."

"Who art thou then, that canst so touch my soul?"

"Girl! nimble with thy feet, not with thy hands! Curl'd minion, dancer, coiner of sweet words!"

"For a cloud Grew suddenly in Heaven, and darked the sun."

"And he saw that Youth, Of age and looks to be his own dear son, Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, Like some rich hyacinth, which by the scythe Of an unskillful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass; — so Sohrab lay, Lovely in death, upon the common sand. And Rustum gazed on him with grief."

"O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!"

"An unlopp’d trunk it was, and huge, Still rough; like those which men in treeless plains ... fish from the flooded rivers."

"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine."

"On the mind of an adversary one never makes the faintest impression."

"And all the Persians knew him, and with shouts Hail’d; but the Tartars knew not who he was."

"Was Christ a man like us? — Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he!"

"The East bowed low before the blast, In patient deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again."

"Hath man no second life? — Pitch this one high!"

"Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name."

"It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think."

"It is — last stage of all — When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man."

"Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat."

"Ere the parting hour go by, Quick, thy tablets, Memory!"

"This truth — to prove, and make thine own: ‘Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.’"

"Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm, Endless extinction of unhappy hates."

"But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok’d souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will."

"With women the heart argues, not the mind."

"Their ineffectual feuds and feeble hates, Shadows of hates, but they distress them still."

"Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day."

"Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself."

"I will not say that thou wast true, Yet let me say that thou wast fair! And they that lovely face who view, They should not ask if truth be there."

"A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again."

"A man becomes aware of his life's flow... And there arrives a lull in the hot race."

"The same heart beats in every human breast."

"And then he thinks he knows The Hills where his life rose, And the Sea where it goes."

"How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again — thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!"

"I am past thirty, and three parts iced over."

"Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power."

"Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore."

"What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also."

"Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too."