19th-century Poet Quotes

A moment is a mighty thing
Beyond the soul's imagination;
For in it, though we trace it not,
How much there crowds of varied lot
How much of life, life cannot see,
Darts onward to eternity!

As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Ha! see where the wild-blazing Grog-shop appears,
As the red waves of wretchedness swell;
How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years—
The horrible Light-house of Hell!

McDonald Clarke
McDonald Clarke
All papas and mammas have exactly that sort of sight which distinguishes objects at a distance clearly, while they need spectacles to see those under their very noses.

It is always so, every pleasure comes exactly half an hour too late - Life! Life!

But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie; Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!

I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
Through mony a weary way;
But never, never can forget
The love o' life's young day!

William Motherwell
William Motherwell
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine:
Firm stands thy watch along the Rhine.

I love the sweet linnet, the lark, and the thrush, And the gold-throated blackbird with a song in each bush ; The finch and the robin, I love everyone, But not the pied magpie that's walking alone.

There has been no lack of courage in Ireland; there never is, but even our courage has a fatal quality.

Where is the heart that doth not keep,
Within its inmost core,
Some fond remembrance hidden deep,
Of days that are no more?

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

If this be all, for which I've listened long,
Oh, spirit of the dew!
You did not sing to Shelley such a song
As Shelley sung to you.

All quiet along the Potomac, they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing—a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.
The music was by James Hewitt

A sound like a sound of thunder rolled,
And the heart of a nation stirred

By the waters of Life we sat together,
Hand in hand, in the golden days
Of the beautiful early summer weather,
When skies were purple and breath was praise.

The noble Nazarene... who raged against "the world," against the philistinism, the halfheartedness, the lack of ideals—if he had guessed that he was forging a weapon for the hands of exactly "this world"—he who sensed the misfortune of humanity so deeply that he didn't find any other solution to its enigma than to entirely reject and turn his back on all that is earthly, would see his name dragged into the service of an intense philistine optimism.

You are so great, and I am so small,
I hardly can think of you, World, at all

Not alone is the child born through the mother, but the mother also is born through the child.

We are the whirlwinds that winnow the West—
We scatter the wicked like straw!
We are the Nemeses, never at rest—
We are Justice, and Right, and the Law!

Thanksgiving-day, I fear, If one the solemn truth must touch, Is celebrated, not so much To thank the Lord for blessing o'er, As for the sake of getting more!

Will Carleton
Will Carleton
It is only the happy who are hard, Gilles. I think perhaps it is better for the world if - if one has a broken heart. One is quick to recognise it, elsewhere. And one has time to think about other people, if there is nothing left to hope for any more.

Epitaph:
Went the day well? we died and never knew;
But well or ill, England, we died for you.

I do not feel myself called upon to say how many loaves of bread, under my apprenticeship, came out of the oven as heavy as a bad joke...

Whoso maintains that I am humbled now
(Who wait the Awful Day) is still a liar;
I hope to meet my Maker brow to brow
And find my own the higher.