pantheists

"Like chastened children sitting silent in a school."

"When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away."

"Those house them best who house for secrecy."

"Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, True to the wind that kissed ere canker came."

"For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one's life were riven."

"And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, Till the Spinner of the Years Said "Now!" And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres."

"Love is lovelier The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise."

"O, doth a bird deprived of wings Go earth-bound wilfully!"

"For incensed love breathes quick and dies, When famished love a-lingering lies."

"That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement Day."

""Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads; Yet at mothy curfew-tide, And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads, They've a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide."

"Still rule those minds on earth At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled: ‘Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?"

"How fares the Truth now?—Ill? —Do pens but slily further her advance? May one not speed her but in phrase askance?"

"No man can change the common lot to rare."

"They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined — just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.Young Hodge the Drummer never knew — Fresh from his Wessex home — The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally."

"Is your heart far away, Or with mine beating? When false things are brought low, And swift things have grown slow, Feigning like froth shall go, Faith be for aye."

"Whence comes solace? Not from seeing, What is doing, suffering, being; Not from noting Life’s conditions, Not from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream And in gazing at the Gleam Whereby gray things golden seem."

"Ah, no; the years, the years; Down their carved names the raindrop plows."

"At once a voice outburst among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware."

"Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash of the First, Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst, Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom, and fear, Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here."

"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race? By Me created? Sad its lot? Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: Such world I fashioned not."

"This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at "The Traveller's Rest", And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I."

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, Brides are not what they seem; Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; I am thy very dream!"

"That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake."

"As newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind. —We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind, And keen are yet, must not regret To drop behind."

"'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it And pay a million priests to bring it. After two thousand years of mass We’ve got as far as poison-gas."

"Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?""

"Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity."

"So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid."

"She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly."

"Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power."

"So the two forces were at work here as everywhere, the inherent will to enjoy, and the circumstantial will against enjoyment."

"A novel is an impression, not an argument."

"By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter's husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a worse."

"'Twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o' place."

"It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence of the lives therein."

"Her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain."

"All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands."

"She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind — or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units."

"How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my account?"

"The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore, As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore; Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar."

"And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!"

"She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play."

"One grievous failing of Elizabeth’s was her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect words—those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel."

"If you are cheerful, and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. Of all the sciences, it alone deserves the character of the terrible."

"Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears."

"See what deceits love sows in honest minds!"

"Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!"

"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be — and whenever I look up, there will be you."

"When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail."