Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,[562-1]
Nor named thee but to praise.
_On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake._
There is an evening twilight of the heart,
When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest.
_Twilight._
They love their land because it is their own,
And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,
And think it kindness to his Majesty.
_Connecticut._
This bank-note world.
_Alnwick Castle._
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings.
_Alnwick Castle._
FOOTNOTES:
[562-1] See Rogers, page 455.
CHARLES WOLFE. 1791-1823.
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried.
_The Burial of Sir John Moore._
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.
_The Burial of Sir John Moore._
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
_The Burial of Sir John Moore._
If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou couldst mortal be.
_To Mary._
Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light, ne'er seen before,
As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore.
_To Mary._
Go, forget me! why should sorrow
O'er that brow a shadow fling?
Go, forget me, and to-morrow
Brightly smile and sweetly sing!
Smile,--though I shall not be near thee;
Sing,--though I shall never hear thee!
_Go, forget me!_
HENRY HART MILMAN. 1791-1868.
And the cold marble leapt to life a god.
_The Belvedere Apollo._
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
_The Belvedere Apollo._
CHARLES SPRAGUE. 1791-1875.
Lo where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
_Curiosity._
Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends.
_Curiosity._
Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.
_Centennial Ode. Stanza 22._
Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctors' spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.
_To my Cigar._
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1822.
Then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone.
_The Revolt of Islam. Dedication. Stanza 6._
With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
_The Revolt of Islam. Canto v. Stanza 23._
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us.
_Hymn to Intellectual Beauty._
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.
_Adonais. xxx._
A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.
_Adonais. xxxii._
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
_Adonais. lii._
Oh thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.
_Ode to the West Wind._
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
_Ode to the West Wind._
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.
_The Cloud. iv._
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
_To a Skylark. Line 86._
Kings are like stars,--they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.[565-1]
_Hellas. Line 195._
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set;
While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon,
The cross leads generations on.
_Hellas. Line 221._
The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn.
_Hellas. Line 1060._
What! alive, and so bold, O earth?
_Written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon._
All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
. . . . . .
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.[566-1]
_Prometheus Unbound. Act ii. Sc. 5._
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and this must be
Our chastisement or recompense.
_Julian and Maddalo. Line 482._
Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.[566-2]
_Julian and Maddalo. Line 544._
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear.
_Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples. Stanza 4._
Peter was dull; he was at first
Dull,--oh so dull, so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
Still with this dulness was he cursed!
Dull,--beyond all conception, dull.
_Peter Bell the Third. Part vii. xi._
A lovely lady, garmented in light
From her own beauty.
_The Witch of Atlas. Stanza 5._
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
_Music, when soft Voices die._
I love tranquil solitude
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good.
_Rarely, rarely comest Thou._
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
_To Jane. The keen Stars were twinkling._
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
_One Word is too often profaned._
You lie--under a mistake,[567-1]
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man's face. I now
Say what I think.
_Translation of Calderon's Magico Prodigioso. Scene i._
How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep.
_Queen Mab. i._
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
_Queen Mab. iii._
Heaven's ebon vault
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.
_Queen Mab. iv._
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the
mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the
present.[568-1]
_A Defence of Poetry._
FOOTNOTES:
[565-1] See Bacon, page 166.
[566-1] The pleasure of love is in loving. We are much happier in
the passion we feel than in that we inspire.--ROCHEFOUCAULD:
_Maxim 259._
[566-2] See Butler, page 216.
[567-1] See Swift, page 292.
[568-1] See Coleridge, page 504.
J. HOWARD PAYNE. 1792-1852.
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there 's no place like home;[568-2]
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,
Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
_Home, Sweet Home._ (From the opera of "Clari, the Maid of Milan.")
FOOTNOTES:
[568-2] Home is home, though it be never so homely.--CLARKE:
_Paroemiologia, p. 101._ (1639.)
SEBA SMITH. 1792-1868.
The cold winds swept the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And 'mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press'd,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.
_The Snow Storm._
JOHN KEBLE. 1792-1866.
The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask.
_Morning._
Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die?
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
_The Christian Year. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity._
'T is sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store.
_Burial of the Dead._
Abide with me from morn till eve,
For without Thee I cannot live;
Abide with me when night is nigh,
For without Thee I dare not die.
_Evening._
FELICIA D. HEMANS. 1794-1835.
The stately homes of England,--
How beautiful they stand,
Amid their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!
_The Homes of England._
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine,
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod:
They have left unstained what there they found,--
Freedom to worship God.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
Through the laburnum's dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of Orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.
_The Palm-Tree._
They grew in beauty side by side,
They filled one home with glee:
Their graves are severed far and wide
By mount and stream and sea.
_The Graves of a Household._
Alas for love, if thou wert all,
And naught beyond, O Earth!
_The Graves of a Household._
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
_Casabianca._
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
_The Hour of Death._
Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.
_Tyrolese Evening Song._
In the busy haunts of men.
_Tale of the Secret Tribunal. Part i._
Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Fair spirit, rest thee now!
_Siege of Valencia. Scene ix._
Oh, call my brother back to me!
I cannot play alone:
The summer comes with flower and bee,--
Where is my brother gone?
_The Child's First Grief._
I have looked on the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung his tassels forth.
_The Voice of Spring._
I had a hat. It was not all a hat,--
Part of the brim was gone:
Yet still I wore it on.
_Rhine Song of the German Soldiers after Victory._
EDWARD EVERETT. 1794-1865.
When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.
_Alaric the Visigoth._
You shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest,
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was "the scourge of God."
_Alaric the Visigoth._
No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or
evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle
upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof
went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who
knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned,
happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble
simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands,
the latest generations of the grateful children of America will
make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall
fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington
shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.
_Oration on the Character of Washington._
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 1794-1878.
Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
_The Ages. xxxiii._
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
_Thanatopsis._
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.
_Thanatopsis._
The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.
_Thanatopsis._
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.
_Thanatopsis._
All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.
_Thanatopsis._
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves[572-1]
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 that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
_Thanatopsis._
The groves were God's first temples.
_A Forest Hymn._
The stormy March has come at last,
With winds and clouds and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
_March._
But 'neath yon crimson tree
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.
_Autumn Woods._
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.
_The Death of the Flowers._
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
_The Death of the Flowers._
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
_A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson._
The victory of endurance born.
_The Battle-Field._
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,--
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
_The Battle-Field._
FOOTNOTES:
[572-1] The edition of 1821 read,--
The innumerable caravan that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take.
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 1795-1820.
When Freedom from her mountain-height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home!
By angel hands to valour given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
_The American Flag._
JOHN KEATS. 1795-1821.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.
_Endymion. Book i._
He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.
_Endymion. Book ii._
To sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
_Endymion. Book iv._
So many, and so many, and such glee.
_Endymion. Book iv._
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust.
_Lamia. Part ii._
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
_Lamia. Part ii._
Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 3._
The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 4._
Asleep in lap of legends old.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 15._
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 16._
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 18._
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 27._
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 30._
He play'd an ancient ditty long since mute,
In Provence call'd "La belle dame sans mercy."
_The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 33._
That large utterance of the early gods!
_Hyperion. Book i._
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
_Hyperion. Book i._
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
_Hyperion. Book ii._
Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth!
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth.
_Ode to a Nightingale._
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
_Ode to a Nightingale._
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
_Ode on a Grecian Urn._
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on,--
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
_Ode on a Grecian Urn._
Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
_Ode on a Grecian Urn._
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
_Ode on a Grecian Urn._
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
_Stanzas._
Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?
_Addressed to Haydon. Sonnet x._
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
_On first looking into Chapman's Homer._
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
_To One who has been long in City pent._
The poetry of earth is never dead.
_On the Grasshopper and Cricket._
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.[577-1]
FOOTNOTES:
[577-1] See Chapman, page 37.
Among the many things he has requested of me to-night, this is the
principal,--that on his gravestone shall be this
inscription.--RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES: _Life, Letters, and
Literary Remains of John Keats. Letter to Severn, vol. ii. p. 91._
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD. 1795-1854.
So his life has flowed
From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,
In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure
Alone are mirrored; which, though shapes of ill
May hover round its surface, glides in light,
And takes no shadow from them.
_Ion. Act i. Sc. 1._
'T is a little thing
To give a cup of water; yet its draught
Of cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarean juice
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.
_Ion. Act i. Sc. 2._
THOMAS CARLYLE. 1795-1881.
Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out
of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has
reached this country is his saying,--imported by Madame de Staël,
and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,--"Providence
has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English
that of the sea; to the Germans that of--the air!"
_Richter. Edinburgh Review, 1827._
Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.
_State of German Literature. Edinburgh Review, 1827._
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
_Goethe. Edinburgh Review, 1828._
We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of
any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good
qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
_Goethe. Edinburgh Review, 1828._
How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still
more a man than they?
_Burns. Edinburgh Review, 1828._
A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical
impossibility.
_Burns. Edinburgh Review, 1828._
His religion at best is an anxious wish,--like that of Rabelais,
a great Perhaps.
_Burns. Edinburgh Review, 1828._
We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to
that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we
can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of
truth."[578-1]
_Voltaire. Foreign Review, 1829._
We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a
religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or
aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and
brotherly commiseration.
_Voltaire. Foreign Review, 1829._
There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a
biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no
life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its
sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time.
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely,
of _la carrière ouverte aux talents_,--the tools to him that can
handle them.[579-1]
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly
co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive
one!
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to
the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He
himself never knows it, much less do others.
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with
him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that
eighteenth century of Time.
_Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought
with it the means of seeing."
_Varnhagen Von Ense's Memoirs. London and Westminster Review, 1838._
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books.[579-2]
_Life of Frederick the Great. Book xvi. Chap. i._
As the Swiss inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen
ist golden_,--"Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I
might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of
Eternity.
_Sartor Resartus. Book iii. Chap. iii._
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of
none.[579-3]
_Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Prophet._
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate
audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance
of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
_Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters._
The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
_Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters._
One life,--a little gleam of time between two Eternities.
_Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters._
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can
stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
_Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters._
FOOTNOTES:
[578-1] How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in
reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of
ridicule?--SHAFTESBURY: _Characteristics. A Letter concerning
Enthusiasm, sect. 2._
Truth, 't is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those
principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be
viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule
itself.--SHAFTESBURY: _Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour,
sect. 1._
'T was the saying of an ancient sage (Gorgias Leontinus, _apud_
Aristotle's "Rhetoric," lib. iii. c. 18), that humour was the only
test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would
not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear
a serious examination was certainly false wit.--_Ibid. sect. 5._
[579-1] Carlyle in his essay on Mirabeau, 1837, quotes this from a
"New England book."