Why wakes not life the desert bare and lone?
To show what all would be if she were gone.
--John Sterling.
So live that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.
--William Cullen Bryant.
The time is short.
If thou wouldst work for God it must be now.
If thou wouldst win the garlands for thy brow,
Redeem the time.
I sometimes feel the thread of life is slender;
And soon with me the labor will be wrought;
Then grows my heart to other hearts more tender;
The time is short.
The man who idly sits and thinks
May sow a nobler crop than corn;
For thoughts are seeds of future deeds,
And when God thought, the world was born.
--George John Romanes.
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
--Christopher Pearse Cranch.
That thou mayst injure no man dovelike be,
And serpentlike that none may injure thee.
The poem hangs on the berry bush
When comes the poet's eye.
The street begins to masquerade
When Shakespeare passes by.
--William C. Gannett.
Be thou a poor man and a just
And thou mayest live without alarm;
For leave the good man Satan must,
The poor the Sultan will not harm.
--From the Persian.
Diving, and finding no pearls in the sea,
Blame not the ocean; the fault is in thee!
--From the Persian.
All habits gather by unseen degrees;
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
--John Dryden.
Habits are soon assumed, but when we strive
To strip them off 'tis being flayed alive.
--William Cowper.
So live that when the mighty caravan,
Which halts one night-time in the Vale of Death,
Shall strike its white tents for the morning march,
Thou shalt mount onward to the Eternal Hills,
Thy foot unwearied, and thy strength renewed
Like the strong eagle's for the upward flight.
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance and nod and bustle by,
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
--Matthew Arnold.
Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short summer--man a flower.
--Dr. Samuel Johnson.
This world's no blot for us
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
--Robert Browning.
What is life?
'Tis not to stalk about, and draw fresh air,
Or gaze upon the sun. 'Tis to be free.
--Joseph Addison.
I see the right, and I approve it too,
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
--Ovid.
God asks not "To what sect did he belong?"
But, "Did he do the right, or love the wrong?"
--From the Persian.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
One wept all night beside a sick man's bed:
At dawn the sick was well, the mourner dead.
--From the Persian.
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
O life, not death, for which we pant;
More life and fuller that I want.
--Alfred Tennyson.