Quotes to inspire and reflect

So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be.

 

O Sorrow, wilt Thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife.

 

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

 

The great world’s altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God.

 

But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

 

So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life.

 

Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill.

 

Hold thou the good; define it well; For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

Be near me when my light is low.

 

How fares it with the happy dead?

 

I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

 

Our little systems have their day.

 

Believing where we cannot prove.

 

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me.

 

Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

 

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

 

Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion.

 

O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

 

Man is the hunter; woman is his game.

 

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.

 

The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

 

Cophetua sware a royal oath; “This beggar maid shall be my queen!”

 

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.

 

My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

 

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

 

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

 

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapp’d in universal law.

 

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

 

For I dipp’d into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

 

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.

 

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.

 

This is the truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

 

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

 

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

 

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use, As though to breathe were life!