Quotes to inspire and reflect

Beauty is Nature’s brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at the workmanship; It is for homely features to keep home— They had their name thence; coarse complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply The sampler, and to tease the huswife’s wool. What need a vermeil-tinctur’d lip for that, Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?

Praising the lean and sallow abstinence.

That power Which erring men call Chance.

I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of Death.

Fill’d the air with barbarous dissonance.

How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo’s lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Tis Chastity, my brother, Chastity: She that has that, is clad in complete steel.

Such sober certainty of waking bliss.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom’s self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smil’d!

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen Within thy airy shell By slow Meander’s margent green, And in the violet-embroider’d vale.

A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beck’ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men’s names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.

Was I deceiv’d or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastic round.

Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn on th’ Indian steep, From her cabin’d loophole peep.

Midnight shout and revelry, Tipsy dance and jollity.

What hath night to do with sleep?

The star that bids the shepherd fold.

And the gilded car of day, His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream.

These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris’ woof.

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape Crush’d the sweet poison of misused wine.

What never yet was heard in tale or song, From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.

An old, and haughty nation proud in arms.

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth.

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of Eternity.

And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced choir below, In service high, and anthems clear As may, with sweetness, through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

Before the starry threshold of Jove’s Court My mansion is.

Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold.

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as, warbled to the string, Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek.

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptered pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line, Or the tale of Troy divine.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging low with sullen roar.

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth.

Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!

I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heav’n’s wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bow’d, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.

And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

Hail divinest Melancholy.

Sober, steadfast, and demure.

Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred!

Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain’d Eurydice. These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee, I mean to live.

Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize.

And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry, Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.

Tower’d cities please us then, And the busy hum of men.

And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the checkered shade. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.

Meadows trim, with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosom’d high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes.

And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.