Quotes to inspire and reflect

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom; Lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

Time hath a taming hand.

Glimmering stars of the Great Bear, I never thought I’d be back to see you Shining down on my father’s garden, Nor talk to you ever again from the windows Of this house where I spent my childhood And saw the last of my happiness vanish.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

What were we? What was that bitter instant We called life?

No author is a man of genius to his publisher.

So we keep asking, over and over, Until a handful of earth Stops our mouths— But is that an answer?

Child, you are like a flower, So sweet and pure and fair. I look at you, and sadness Touches me with a prayer.

I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen upon me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be.

I will not mourn, although my heart is torn, Oh, love forever lost! I will not mourn.

On wings of song, my dearest, I will carry you off.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain.

It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns.

I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!”

She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.

I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful, a faery’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing!

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is— I hold it towards you.

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

For to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drows’d with the fume of poppies while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host’s Canary wine?

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?

Ever let the fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!

To make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours.

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” 1 —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude!

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Forever piping songs forever new.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter.

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!