Poets From The United States

"Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground, Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound Along the heedless air; Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave; She claims from war his richest spoil— The ashes of her brave."

"Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone, In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor Time's remorseless doom, Shall dim one ray of glory's light That gilds your deathless tomb."

"Nature is Man’s teacher. She unfolds Her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, Illumes his mind and purifies his heart. An influence breathes from all the sights and sounds Of her existence."

"The only true source of politeness is consideration."

"Bright is the beautiful land of our birth, The home of the homeless all over the earth."

"What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone."

"The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians."

"The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead."

"Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes."

"The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already."

"But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim."

"Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy."

"We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies."

"The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man."

"No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society."

"Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities and virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures."

"It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment."

"The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them."

"The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul. The soul must work its way out of prison, and, in doing so, provide itself with wings for a future journey. It is for each of us to determine whether our wings shall be those of an angel or a grub!"

"Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery."

"Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also."

"To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain."

"It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues."

"Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent."

"There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it."

"Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities. We gain only as we give."

"Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing."

"... there is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object."

"The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood."

"Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about for ever in expectation of a crumb; while Self-Esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as he goes."

"The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian."

"Vanity is so constantly solicitous of self, that even where its own claims are not interested, it indirectly seeks the aliment which it loves, by showing how little is deserved by others."

"Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to award — these are the true aims and duties of criticism."

"... the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air."

"He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius."

"Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man's hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame."

"We shall meet, but we shall miss him, There will be one vacant chair; We shall linger to caress him, When we breathe our ev'ning pray'r."

". So, then, you know all about this errand of ours? . As much as you do. I know that General Belcher sent a messenger, asking Deadshot to provide a safe escort for Professor Andover, of Boston, and a party of ladies, to Lone Star Ranch. Andover declined a military escort, but Belcher, notwithstanding the country is quiet, wants us to see them safely through. . Yes, that’s it; but who are Professor Andover and his party . Boston people; with a mission to regenerate the world, Indians especially. . Well, I should think Deadshot would like his errand. He is a Boston man I’ve always understood. . Yes. He came out here with me ten years ago, just out of college, rich, adventurous and restless. City life was too tame for Arthur Cambridge. You know how he took to the life of a scout, and now, under the name of Captain Deadshot, he is the most famous Indian fighter and scout on the plains."

"I might almost define a lie as being the narrative of a human event that had been printed."

"The mate was fixed by the bos’n’s pike, The bos’n brained with a marlinspike."

"You see I lost two years going to school—from seven to nine years old. I was put out of all the private schools for incorrigible “inattention”—then it was discovered that I had been partially deaf and not guilty—but my schooling ended there and I was turned loose on my father’s library to get an education by main force—got it by reading everything—had read Rousseau’s “Confessions” at 14—and books replaced folks as companions. Wanted to get nearer to books and so hired myself to the country printer and newspaper at 13—great disappointment to the family, my mother having dreams of my becoming a preacher—[hell of a preacher I would have made]. I had meantime begun and finished as much as a page apiece of many stories and books, several epic poems—but one day the Old Man went home to dinner and left me only a scrap of “reprint” to set during his hour and a half of absence. It was six or eight lines nonpareil about the Russian gentleman who started to drive from his country home to the city one evening in his sleigh with his 4 children. Wolves attacked them and one by one he threw the children to the pack, hoping each time thus to save the others. When he had thrown the last his sleigh came to the city gate with him sitting in it a raving maniac. That yarn had been going the rounds of print since 1746. The Old Man was an absent-minded old child, and I knew it, so I turned my fancy loose and enlarged the paragraph to a full galley of long primer, composing the awful details as I set the type and made it a thriller. The Old Man never “held copy” reading proof, so he passed it all right and I saw myself an author in print for the first time. The smell of printer’s ink has never since been out of my hair."

"We wrapped ’em all in a mains’l tight, With twice ten turns of a hawser’s bight, And we heaved ’em over and out of sight— With a yo-heave-ho! And a fare-you-well! And a sullen plunge In the sullen swell Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell— Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"

"The microbe that might have become glorious ounces of brain has been content at first to become merely a little wart of pulp, which finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another, until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude of incarnate genius burning like suns with their own essence. It is so far up that the eyes deceive and men dispute who it is that stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the force of strength, determination and patient will, the whole swarm of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of all below."

"Old straight whiskey! That is the drink of life— Consolation, family, friends and wife! So make your glasses ready, Pour fingers three, then—steady! “Here’s good luck to Kentucky and whiskey straight!”"

"A flimsy shift on a bunker cot, With a thin dirk-slot through the bosom spot And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot. Or was she wench... Or some shuddering maid...? That dared the knife And that took the blade! By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade— Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"

"Suppose every word that every member of this intelligent and most respectable audience has said today:—the merchant to his customers and creditors; the man of leisure to his cronies and companions, the professional man to his clients; even the ladies to their bosom friends at tea or euchre—suppose, I say, that every word you had uttered had been taken down by some marvelous mechanical contrivance, and should be published verbatim tomorrow morning with your names attached showing just what each of you had said. What do you think would happen? I can tell you from observation. You would likely spend next year explaining, denying, apologizing and repenting. Suits for slander would appear on the courthouse shelves as thick as blackberries in August. There would be friendships shattered, confidences dissipated, feuds established, social anarchy enthroned and perhaps this admirable club could never hold another meeting for lack of a quorum of members willing to meet each other in one room."

"The great muse of History ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?"

"I know not where I go; I scarcely feel The menacing fatigue about my feet, The skies that scourge, the distances that cheat, the constant wounds that never hurt nor heal."

"And they shall know that in the ordering Of every world to come the law shall read That he who dares be lawless wears the wing Of bird and prophet and his light shall lead On through the darkness to eventual light, To undiscovered wealth, to newer need. ..."

"Mine was a love so exquisite that I Rather than watch it wither chose to die: So dress my grave, O friend, with no poor flower Which in your quiet garden blooms an hour!"