English Poet Quotes

It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter.

As with gladness men of old
Did the guiding star behold.

William Chatterton Dix

Love, a child, is ever crying:
Please him and he straight is flying,
Give him, he the more is craving,
Never satisfied with having.

Lady Mary Wroth

Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory.

Thomas Traherne

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying!

William Pitt (ship-builder)

Al the povere peple tho pescoddes fetten; Benes and baken apples thei broghte in hir lappe, Chibolles and chervelles and ripe chiries manye, And profrede Piers this present to plese with Hunger.

William Langland

Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine —
Thy wounded hand! — until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch.

Though like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

Everything that I write is a kind of battle won—or lost—against silence and incoherence.

In heaven above, And earth below, they best can serve true gladness Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

William Wordsworth

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.

And an ingenious Spaniard says, that "rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate and fools to pass by without consideration."

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

Look in, and see Christ's chosen saint In triumph wear his Christ-like chain; No fear lest he should swerve or faint; "His life is Christ, his death is gain.

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

Richard Aldington

The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.

Christina Rossetti

But now I see well the old proverb is true: That parish priest forgetteth that ever he was a clerk!

O lust, thou infernal fire, whose fuel is gluttony; whose flame is pride, whose sparkles are wanton words; whose smoke is infamy; whose ashes are uncleanness; whose end is hell.

Francis Quarles

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done.

Joshua Sylvester

Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.

From marrying in haste, and repenting at leisure;
Not liking the person, yet liking his treasure:
Libera nos.

Elizabeth Thomas

Nor too much wealth nor wit come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.