"And the jasmin-flower in her fair young breast: (O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmin-flower!) And the one bird singing alone in his nest: And the one star over the tower."

"A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon look'd forth, as tho' in pain, With her face al white and wet."

"The ages roll Forward; and, forward with them, draw my soul Into Time’s infinite sea. And to be glad or sad I care no more: But to have done, and to have been, before I cease to do and be!"

"Oh, moment of sweet peril, perilous sweet! When woman joins herself to man."

"We are what we must, And not what we would be. I know that one hour Forestalls not another. The will and the power Are diverse."

"'Tis more brave To live, than to die."

"Then did I feel as one who, much perplext, Led by strange legends and the light of stars Over long regions of the midnight sand Beyond the red tract of the Pyramids, Is suddenly drawn to look upon the sky From sense of unfamiliar light, and sees Reveal'd against the constellated cope The great cross of the South."

"That's best Which God sends. 'Twas His will: it is mine."

"There is a pleasure which is born of pain."

"Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem."

"Rest is sweet after strife."

"A wikked tonge wol alway deme amis."

"The unknown Is life to love, religion, poetry."

"When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? How works it?.. we scarcely detect it."

"Off oure language he was the lodesterre."

"That man is great, and he alone, Who serves a greatness not his own."

"Trouthe wil out maugre of fals enuye, Rihtwysnesse may nat ben hid certeyn, As for a tyme it may been ovirleyn."

"Lightly I sped when hope was high And youth beguiled the chase,— I follow, follow still: But I Shall never see her face."

"The world's as ugly, ay, as Sin,— And almost as delightful."

"And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny, Such cozy dimensions go clearly to show You were an exceedingly small pickaninny, Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago."

"A voluminous, prosaick, and drivelling Monk."

""Vanitas vanitatum" has rung in the ears Of gentle and simple for thousands of years; The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair."

"In images of horror, and in a certain terrible greatness, our author comes far behind Chaucer. Whether they were not suited to the genius or the temper of Lydgate, I do not determine; but it is certain that, though they naturally seemed to present themselves, he has almost generally chose to avoid them: yet is there frequently a stiller kind of majesty both in his thought and expression, which makes one of his principal beauties."

"He is the first of our writers whose style is cloathed with that perspicuity, in which the English phraseology appears at this day to an English reader…Whether his subject be the life of a hermit or a hero, of saint Austin or Guy earl of Warwick, ludicrous or legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes with facility."

"What an arm—what a waist For an arm!"

"The wheel of Fortune tourneth as a ball; Sodeyn clymbyng axeth a sodeyn fall."

"For hit ys oft seyde by hem that yet lyues He must nedys go that the deuell dryues."

"Also Johnn Lydgate Wryteth after an hyer rate; It is dyffuse to fynde The sentence of his mynde, Yet wryteth he in his kynd, No man that can amend Those maters that he hath pende; Yet some men fynde a faute, And say he wryteth too haute."

"Comparable with Chawcer, yet more occupyed in supersticious and odde matters than was requesite in so good a wytte."

"Far up the wave The clouds that lay piled in the golden heat Were turn'd into types of the ancient mountains In an ancient land."

"We are but as the instrument of heaven. Our work is not design, but destiny."

"Art is Nature made by Man To Man the interpreter of God."

"For only by knowledge of that which is not Thyself shall thyself be learn'd."

"Who can undo What time hath done? who can win back the wind? Beckon lost music from a broken lute? Renew the redness of a last year's rose? Or dig the sunken sunset from the deep?"

"Since we parted, yester eve, I do love thee, love, believe, Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer, One dream deeper, one night stronger, One sun surer,—thus much more Than I loved thee, love, before."

"The thing which must be, must be for the best."

"As I am never better than when I am mad; then methinks I am a brave fellow; then I do wonders: but reason abuseth me, and there's the torment, there's the hell."

"Duly twice a morning Would I be sprinkling it with fountain-water. At last it grew, and grew, and bore, and bore, Till at the length It grew a gallows, and did bear our son, It bore thy fruit and mine: O wicked, wicked plant."

"Lor’, but women’s rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost, And I reckon it’s just through a woman the last man on earth’ll be lost."

"My son – and what's a son? A thing begot Within a pair of minutes, thereabout: A lump bred up in darkness."

"Where words prevail not, violence prevails; But gold doth more than either of them both."

"What outcries pluck me from my naked bed And chill my throbbing heart with trembling fear."

"Evil news fly faster still than good."

"In time the savage bull sustains the yoke, In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure, In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak, In time the flint is pierced with softest shower."

"Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; Oh life, no life, but lively form of death; Oh world, no world, but mass of public wrongs, Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds."

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee."

"Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code."

"Thus must we toil in other men's extremes, That know not how to remedy our own."

"And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky."

"This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!"