James Thomson (B.V.) Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

James Thomson
Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years?

James Thomson
The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air.

James Thomson
The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long: Sits long and rises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.

James Thomson
Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, O my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
At home, on land, on sea.

James Thomson
For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day.

James Thomson
The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

James Thomson
The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night seems termless hell.

James Thomson
I find no hint throughout the Universe Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse; I find alone Necessity Supreme.

James Thomson
As we rush, as we rush in the train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above that plain
Come flying on our track.

James Thomson
Statues and pictures and verse may be grand, But they are not the Life for which they stand.

James Thomson
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

James Thomson
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note;
The air so thick it clotted in my throat.

James Thomson
We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!

James Thomson
Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.

James Thomson
The mighty river flowing dark and deep,
With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides,
Vague-sounding through the City's sleepless sleep,
Is named the River of the Suicides.

James Thomson
And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanish
In that sweet sleep no power can ever banish,
That one best sleep which never wakes again.

James Thomson