Quotes

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.

I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incens’d that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.

I could be well content To entertain the lag-end of my life With quiet hours.

What do I care that you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad! 11

The natives of the rain are rainy men.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild: Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat; Yet, fool’d with hope, men favor the deceit; Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow’s falser than the former day.

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair— The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing— And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance, To mend it or be rid on ’t.

Such water-colors to impaint his cause.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

The plum survives its poems.

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox.

Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful: The seeds of godlike power are in us still: Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

The wretched have no friends.

I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks.

Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

Let me tell the world. 14

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Green crammers of the green fruits of the world.

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he— Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.! That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, Found death in life, may here find life in death.

The time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long.

Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world forever and aye.

Your Cleopatra; Dolabella’s Cleopatra; every man’s Cleopatra.