Quotes to inspire and reflect

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space—out of Time.

And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head.

And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy gray eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams— In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

If I could dwell Where Israfel 1 Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city, lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

The happiest day—the happiest hour My sear’d and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw.

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I am the somber one, the unconsoled widower, The Prince of Aquitaine whose tower was destroyed. 2 My only star is dead, and my star-studded lute Wears the black sun of Melancholy.

Angel of the backward look.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.

Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about.

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn.

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” 2

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules, Knowledge never learned of schools.

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

From those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!

The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling.

No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!

In the long, sleepless watches of the night.

There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; And when she was good She was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid.

The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.

Three silences there are: the first of speech, The second of desire, the third of thought.

He seemed the incarnate “Well, I told you so!”

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

One if by land, and two if by sea; 1 And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair.

A Lady with a Lamp [Florence Nightingale] shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet.

A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and majesty of the ships, And the magic of the sea.

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”