English Poet Quotes

War rages on the teeming earth;
The hot and sanguinary fight
Begins with each new creature's birth:
A dreadful war where might is right;
Where still the strongest slay and win,
Where weakness is the only sin.

Mathilde Blind
Mathilde Blind
How happily, how happily, the flowers die away!
Oh! Could we but return to earth as easily as they.

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

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

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.

He 'midst the graceful of superior grace,
And she the loveliest of the loveliest race.

Thomas Tickell
Thomas Tickell
Nothing can ever be done;
things are intractably thus;
all know the bite of grief, all will be brought to
destiny's issue;
those who have precognition suffer
sorrow beforehand;
bodies are bankrupt, the main Expedition has
left us behind it.

Rich apricots, that breathed of mountain flowers.

I do love thee as my lambs
Are belovėd of their dams

Affect not as some do that bookish ambition to be stored with books and have well-furnished libraries, yet keep their heads empty of knowledge; to desire to have many books, and never to use them, is like a child that will have a candle burning by him all the while he is sleeping.

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

Maybe we all want to burn off across the horizon, into space, perhaps, to take off into some unknown territory and meet ourselves out there.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

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

Joshua Sylvester
Joshua Sylvester
Darkness, thou first great parent of us all,
Thou art our great original!

Companion none is like Unto the mind alone;
For many have been harmed by speech,
Through thinking, few or none.

Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; He's more than mortal that ne'er err'd at all.

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

With leaden foot time creeps along
While Delia is away.

The first slap-jack given me for dinner was a cake of flour, partially fried in a pan of fat bacon. I nibbled about the brown edges and threw it, unbaked, against a barn door, where it stuck for days.

For though the day be never so long,
At last the bells ringeth to evensong.

It came as a boon and a blessing to men,
The peaceful, the pure, the victorious pen!

Well, but the joy to see my works in print!
Myself too pictur'd in a mezzo-tint!

The bloody Wolf, the Wolf does not pursue;
The Boar, though fierce, his Tusk will not embrue
In his own kind, Bears, not on Bears do prey:
Thou art then, Man, more savage far than they.

Anne Killigrew
Anne Killigrew