Quotes

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden scepter o’er a slumbering world.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

I am dying, Egypt, dying; only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips.

Crises of expression and spasms of eros: that’s the man of today, the inside a vacuum, the continuity of personality provided by his suit, which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

I saw young Harry, with his beaver on.

Creation sleeps! ’Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

O! wither’d is the garland of the war, The soldier’s pole is fall’n; young boys and girls Are level now with men; the odds is gone, And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon.

Magnificently unprepared For the long littleness of life.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. 5

Be wise today; ’tis madness to defer.

On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, And make death proud to take us.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Procrastination is the thief of time.

And it is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the wheel— The victim and the executioner! 6

At thirty, a man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.

His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear’d arm Crested the world; his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in ’t, an autumn ’twas That grew the more by reaping; his delights Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above The element they liv’d in; in his livery Walk’d crowns and crownets, realms and islands were As plates dropp’d from his pocket.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land.

Worse than the sun in March This praise doth nourish agues.

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

The bright day is done, And we are for the dark.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend; It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread. 7