Quotes to inspire and reflect

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven!

We have imagined for the mighty dead.

But strength alone though of the Muses born Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn, Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchers Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs And thorns of life; forgetting the great end Of poesy, that it should be a friend To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, Where I may find the agonies, the strife Of human hearts.

Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power; ’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed.

The poetry of earth is never dead.

And other spirits there are standing apart Upon the forehead of the age to come; These, these will give the world another heart, And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings _____ ? Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven.

How many bards gild the lapses of time!

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs.

So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead— When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed.

Best and brightest, come away!

Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure.

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night!

The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.

One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night’s sweet bird.

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world’s slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain.

In mockery of monumental stone.

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

The Pilgrim of Eternity [Lord Byron], whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!

A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

To that high capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

I weep for Adonais [John Keats] 4 —he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn.

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Kings are like stars—they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Thou art unseen—but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.