Quotes to inspire and reflect

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few.

I met Murder on the way— He had a mask like Castlereagh. 3

He tossed them human hearts to chew.

Hell is a city much like London— A populous and smoky city.

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king. 2

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright.

Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle.

Men of England, wherefore plow For the lords who lay ye low?

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher.

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes.

And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

That thus enchains us to permitted ill— We might be otherwise—we might be all We dream of happy, high majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind?

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave; A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; A traveler from the cradle to the grave Through the dim light of this immortal day.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

Death is the veil which those who live call life: They sleep, and it is lifted. 1

Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality!

To know nor faith, nor love nor law; to be Omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

From the dust of creeds outworn.

Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good: I am a God and cannot find it there.

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused with ill.

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me.

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us—visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

Now Barabbas was a publisher.

Seek out—less often sought than found— A soldier’s grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest.

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest. 8

The “good old times”—all times when old are good— Are gone.

[Of Napoleon:] Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, Whose table earth—whose dice were human bones.

Who killed John Keats? “I,” says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; “ ’Twas one of my feats.”

To have seen better days, as who has not Who has seen yesterday?

The best of prophets of the future is the past.

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter— Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

All farewells should be sudden.

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

The antique Persians taught three useful things— To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.