For the black bat, night, has flown;
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone.
_Maud. Part i. xxii. Stanza 1._
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
_Maud. Part i. xxii. Stanza 9._
Ah, Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.
_Maud. Part ii. iv. Stanza 3._
Let knowledge grow from more to more.
_In Memoriam. Prologue. Line 25._
I held it truth, with him who sings[631-1]
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.[631-2]
_In Memoriam. i. Stanza 1._
But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.
_In Memoriam. v. Stanza 2._
Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
_In Memoriam. vi. Stanza 2._
And topples round the dreary west
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
_In Memoriam. xv. Stanza 5._
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.[632-1]
_In Memoriam. xviii. Stanza 1._
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing.[632-2]
_In Memoriam. xxi. Stanza 6._
The shadow cloak'd from head to foot.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 1._
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 2._
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
_In Memoriam. xxiii. Stanza 4._
'T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.[632-3]
_In Memoriam. xxvii. Stanza 4._
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.
_In Memoriam. xxxii. Stanza 1._
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
_In Memoriam. xxxiii. Stanza 1._
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
_In Memoriam. xlviii. Stanza 4._
Hold thou the good; define it well;
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
_In Memoriam. liii. Stanza 4._
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
_In Memoriam. liv. Stanza 1._
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
_In Memoriam. liv. Stanza 5._
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
_In Memoriam. lv. Stanza 2._
The great world's altar-stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God.
_In Memoriam. lv. Stanza 4._
Who battled for the True, the Just.
_In Memoriam. lvi. Stanza 5._
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance.
_In Memoriam. lxiv. Stanza 2._
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
_In Memoriam. lxiv. Stanza 3._
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
_In Memoriam. lxxiii. Stanza 1._
Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,
And while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world, which credits what is done,
Is cold to all that might have been.
_In Memoriam. lxxv. Stanza 4._
O last regret, regret can die!
_In Memoriam. lxxviii. Stanza 5._
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
_In Memoriam. xcvi. Stanza 3._
He seems so near, and yet so far.
_In Memoriam. xcvii. Stanza 6._
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 1._
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 2._
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 5._
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 7._
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand!
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be!
_In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 8._
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil'd with all ignoble use.
_In Memoriam. cxi. Stanza 6._
Some novel power
Sprang up forever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much
In watching thee from hour to hour.
_In Memoriam. cxii. Stanza 3._
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd,
In vassal tides that follow'd thought.
_In Memoriam. cxii. Stanza 4._
Wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
_In Memoriam. Conclusion. Stanza 10._
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
_In Memoriam. Conclusion. Stanza 36._
FOOTNOTES:
[623-1] See Marlowe, page 41.
[624-1] This line stands in Moxon's edition of 1842,--
"The gardener Adam and his wife,"--
and has been restored by the author in his edition of 1873.
[624-2] See Chapman, page 37.
[624-3] See Pope, page 340.
[625-1] See Byron, page 543.
[626-1] See Longfellow, page 618.
[628-1] Jaws of death.--SHAKESPEARE: _Twelfth Night, act iii. sc.
4._ DU BARTAS: _Weekes and Workes, day i. part 4._
[629-1] See Cowper, page 422.
[631-1] The poet alluded to is Goethe. I know this from Lord
Tennyson himself, although he could not identify the passage; and
when I submitted to him a small book of mine on his marvellous
poem, he wrote, "It is Goethe's creed," on this very
passage.--Rev. Dr. GETTY (vicar of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire).
[631-2] See Longfellow, page 616.
[632-1] See Shakespeare, page 144.
[632-2] I sing but as the linnet sings.--GOETHE: _Wilhelm Meister,
book ii. chap. xi._
[632-3] See Crabbe, page 444.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON). 1809-1885.
But on and up, where Nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills.
_Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube. Stanza 2._
Great thoughts, great feelings came to them,
Like instincts, unawares.
_The Men of Old._
A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet.
_The Men of Old._
I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,
The noisy wheel was still.
_The Brookside._
The beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
_The Brookside._
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 1809- ----.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
_Old Ironsides._
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
_Old Ironsides._
Like sentinel and nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green.
_The Cambridge Churchyard._
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
_The Last Leaf._
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
_The Last Leaf._
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
_To an Insect._
Their discords sting through Burns and Moore,
Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
_The Music-Grinders._
You think they are crusaders sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of sentiment
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody
And break the legs of Time.
_The Music-Grinders._
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.
_The Height of the Ridiculous._
When the last reader reads no more.
_The Last Reader._
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
_Poetry, a Metrical Essay._
'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow,
Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow.
_A Sentiment._
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
And when you stick on conversation's burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.
_Lines by a Clerk._
Where go the poet's lines?
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers!
_The Poet's Lot._
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
_The Voiceless._
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses!
_The Voiceless._
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
_The Chambered Nautilus._
His home! the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck, the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,--never mind it.
_A Good Time going._
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
_A Good Time going._
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he 's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
_The Boys._
Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels
When the tired player shuffles off the buskin;
A page of Hood may do a fellow good
After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.
_How not to settle it._
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred
times.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on
the railroad tracks.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal
better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
There is that glorious epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the
historian,[637-1] in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the
luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To
this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the
wittiest of men:[638-1] "Good Americans when they die go to
Paris."
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You could n't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crow-bar.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor
its great scholars great men.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Knowledge and timber should n't be much used till they are
seasoned.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The hat is the _ultimum moriens_ of respectability.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. viii._
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and
hopeful than to be forty years old.
_On the Seventieth Birthday of Julia Ward Howe_ (_May 27, 1889_).
FOOTNOTES:
[637-1] John Lothrop Motley.
Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and
happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those
necessary things."--PLUTARCH: _On the Love of Wealth._
[638-1] Thomas G. Appleton.
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1809- ----.
Our Country,--whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine,
or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the
measurements more or less,--still our Country, to be cherished in
all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
_Toast at Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July, 1845._
A star for every State, and a State for every star.
_Address on Boston Common in 1862._
There are no points of the compass on the chart of true
patriotism.
_Letter to Boston Commercial Club in 1879._
The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that
mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want
exasperated into crime.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half
completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands
are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the
States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the
dignity of the elective franchise,--all alike demand that the
still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken,
and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
JAMES ALDRICH. 1810-1856.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.
_A Death-Bed._
But when the sun in all his state
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory's morning-gate,
And walked in Paradise.
_A Death-Bed._
THEODORE PARKER. 1810-1860.
There is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea demands,
as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,--that is, a
government of all the people, by all the people, for all the
people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal
justice, the unchanging law of God. For shortness' sake I will
call it the idea of Freedom.[639-1]
_Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850._
FOOTNOTES:
[639-1] See Daniel Webster, page 532.
EDMUND H. SEARS. 1810-1876.
Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven's melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.
_Christmas Song._
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old.
_The Angels' Song._
MARTIN F. TUPPER. 1810-1889.
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure.
_Of Education._
God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love.
_Of Immortality._
EDGAR A. POE. 1811-1849.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,--
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
_The Raven._
Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster.
_The Raven._
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
_The Raven._
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--Nevermore!
_The Raven._
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
_To Helen._
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1811-1884.
Revolutions are not made; they come.
_Speech, Jan. 28, 1852._
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
_Speech, Dec. 21, 1855._
One on God's side is a majority.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Revolutions never go backward.
_Speech, Feb. 12, 1861._
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. 1811- ----.
A sacred burden is this life ye bear:
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly.
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
_Lines addressed to the Young Gentlemen leaving the Lenox Academy, Mass._
Better trust all, and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart, that if believed
Had blessed one's life with true believing.
_Faith._
BARTHOLOMEW DOWLING.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
'T is all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already,--
Hurrah for the next that dies![641-1]
_Revelry in India._
FOOTNOTES:
[641-1] This quatrain appears with variations in several stanzas.
"The poem," says Mr. Rossiter Johnson in "Famous Single and
Fugitive Poems," "is persistently attributed to Alfred Domett; but
in a letter to me, Feb. 6, 1879, he says: 'I did not write that
poem, and was never in India in my life. I am as ignorant of the
authorship as you can be.'"
ALFRED DOMETT. 1811- ----.
It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.
_Christmas Hymn._
JULIA A. FLETCHER (NOW MRS. CARNEY).
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
So the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity.
_Little Things, 1845._
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
_Little Things, 1845._
AUSTEN H. LAYARD. ---- -1894.
I have always believed that success would be the inevitable
result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play,
and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.[642-1]
_Speech in Parliament, Jan. 15, 1855._[642-2]
FOOTNOTES:
[642-1] See Sydney Smith, page 461.
[642-2] This speech is reported in Hansard's Parliamentary
Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077.
ROBERT BROWNING. 1812-1890.
Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.
_Sordello. Book vi._
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,--what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
Are there not, dear Michal,
Two points in the adventure of the diver,--
One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge;
One, when a prince he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge.
_Paracelsus. Part i._
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
_Paracelsus. Part ii._
The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
To their first fault, and withered in their pride.
_Paracelsus. Part iv._
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
_Paracelsus. Part v._
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man as yet.
_Paracelsus. Part v._
Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this ye call
A "great event" should come to pass
From that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
_Pippa Passes. Introduction._
God 's in his heaven:
All 's right with the world.
_Pippa Passes. Part i._
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,--
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
_Pippa Passes. Part ii._
In the morning of the world,
When earth was nigher heaven than now.
_Pippa Passes. Part iii._
All service ranks the same with God,--
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
_Pippa Passes. Part iv._
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,--the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,--Nature's good
And God's.
_A Soul's Tragedy. Act i._
Ever judge of men by their professions. For though the bright
moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet
if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it,
and know the man by it, I say,--not by his performance; which is
half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its
accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's
own. I judge people by what they might be,--not are, nor will be.
_A Soul's Tragedy. Act ii._
There 's a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the purest.
_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Act i. Sc. iii._
When is man strong until he feels alone?
_Colombe's Birthday. Act iii._
When the fight begins within himself,
A man 's worth something.
_Men and Women. Bishop Blougram's Apology._
The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.
_Cleon._
And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.
_Cleon._
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs;
And Æschylus, because we read his plays!
_Cleon._
Rafael made a century of sonnets.
_One Word More. ii._
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
_One Word More. xii._
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,--one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
_One Word More. xvii._
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
_One Word More. xix._
The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.
_Count Gismond. xiii._
Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.
_Count Gismond. xix._
Just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!
_Instans Tyrannus. vii._
Oh never star
Was lost here but it rose afar.
_Waring. ii._
Sing, riding 's a joy! For me I ride.
_The last Ride together. vii._
When the liquor 's out, why clink the cannikin?
_The Flight of the Duchess. xvi._
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,--
His hundred 's soon hit;
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That has the world here--should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
_A Grammarian's Funeral._
Lofty designs must close in like effects.
_A Grammarian's Funeral._
I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,
For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test
As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment's view!
. . . . . .
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin;
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
_The Statue and the Bust._
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. xxxiii._
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
_The Lost Leader. i._
We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.
_The Lost Leader. ii._
They are perfect; how else?--they shall never change:
We are faulty; why not?--we have time in store.
_Old Pictures in Florence. xvi._
What 's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
_Old Pictures in Florence. xvii._
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais):
"Open my heart, and you will see
Graved inside of it 'Italy.'"
_De Gustibus. ii._
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.
_Home-Thoughts from Abroad. ii._
God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
_Saul. vi._
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
_Saul. ix._
'T is not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do.
_Saul. xvii._
O woman-country![647-1] wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead.
_By the Fireside. vi._
That great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.
_By the Fireside. xxiii._
If two lives join, there is oft a scar.
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
_By the Fireside. xlvi._
Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
_Two in the Campagna. xii._
Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.
_Women and Roses._
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
_After._
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!
_Memorabilia. i._
He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.
_Luria. Act ii._