Edmund Clarence Stedman Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Our school-girls and spinsters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer under their arms; or if they carry Tennyson, Longfellow, and Morris, read them in the light of spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of Mill and Bain.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Science has but one fashion - to lose nothing once gained...

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away? The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky Thou still canst find the color of thy wing, The hue of May. Warbler, why speed, thy southern flight? ah, why, Thou, too, whose song first told us of the Spring? Whither away?

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Lo, as I gaze, the statured man,
Built up from you large hand appears:
A type that nature wills to plan
But once in all a people's years.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was - how large of mould.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
War! war! war!
Heaven aid the right!
God move the hero's arm in the fearful fight!
God send the women sleep in the long, long night,
When the breasts on whose strength they leaned shall heave no more.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Do your heart and head keep pace? When does hoary Love expire, When do frosts put out the fire? Can its embers burn below All that chill December snow?

Edmund Clarence Stedman
White orbs like angels pass Before the triple glass That men may scan the record of each flame, — Of spectral line and line The legendary divine Finding their mould the same, and aye the same, The atoms that we knew before Of which ourselves are made, — dust, and no more.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
But every human path leads on to God;
He holds a myriad finer threads than gold,
And strong as holy wishes, drawing us
With delicate tension upward to Himself.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Alas, by what rude fate Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet, Then part forever on their courses fleet.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Men are egotists, and not all tolerant of one man's selfhood; they do not always deem the amities elective.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
The weary August days are long;
The locusts sing a plaintive song,
The cattle miss their master's call
When they see the sunset shadows fall.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Hopeless of all he dared to hope so long,
The music born within him dies away;
Even the song he loved becomes a pain,
Full-freighted with a yearning all in vain.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
O sweetest of all the flowrets That bloom where angels tread! But never such marvelous odor From heliotrope was shed...

Edmund Clarence Stedman
At last the god cometh!
The air runs over with splendor;
The fire leaps high on the altar;
Melodious thunders shake the ground.
Hark to the Delphic responses!
Hark! it is the god!

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale
Is wild within me! what may quell
That sullen tempest? I must sail
Whither, O whither, who can tell!

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Give me to die unwitting of the day,
And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear!

Edmund Clarence Stedman
In the lap of hoary Europe lie her children ill at rest,
Reaching hands of supplication to their brethren of the West;
Pale about the lifeless fountain of their ancient freedom, wait
Till the angel move its waters and avenge their stricken state.
Let me then, a new crusader, to the eastward set my face,
Wake the fires of old tradition on each sacred altar-place,
Till a trodden people rouse them, with a clamor as divine
As the winds of autumn roaring through the clumps of forest-pine.
I myself would seize their banner; they should follow where it led,
To the triumph of the victors or the pallor of the dead.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, the wine, and all the harvest-home.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
What if there be a fated day
When the Faery Isle shall pass away,
And its beautiful groves and fountains seem
The myths of a long, delicious dream!
A century's joys shall first repay
Our hearts, for the evil of that day;
And the Elfin-King has sworn to wed
A daughter of Earth, whose child shall be,
By cross and water hallowe'd,
From the fairies' doom forever free.
What if there be a fated day!
It is far away! it is far away!
Maiden, fair Maiden, I, who sing
Of this summer isle am the island King.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
I loved: and in the morning sky,
A magic castle upward grew!

Edmund Clarence Stedman
I dare aver
He is a brave discoverer
Of climes his elders do not know.
He has more learning than appears
On the scroll of twice three thousand years.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
O child! dear child!
Above the clouds I lift my wing
To hear the bells of Heaven ring;
Some of their music, though my flights be wild,
To Earth I bring;
Then let me soar and sing!

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Where's he that died o' yesterday?
What better chance hath he
To clink the can and toss the pot
When this night's junkets be?
For the lad that died o' yesterday
Is just as dead — ho! ho! —
As the whoreson knave men laid away
A thousand years ago.

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,
Slipped from my hold—thus plenty comes and goes.
One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand
(Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.

Edmund Clarence Stedman