Quotes

O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

Dear as remember’d kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.

The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.

Cophetua sware a royal oath; “This beggar maid shall be my queen!”

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

And o’er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him.

My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapp’d in universal law.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

For I dipp’d into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.

This is the truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus.

And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravel’d world.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use, As though to breathe were life!

I will drink Life to the lees.

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race.

Ah! when shall all men’s good Be each man’s rule, and universal peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year?

The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end.

Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young.

The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea, So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro’ the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side. “The curse is come upon me,” cried

“Tirra lirra,” by the river Sang Sir Lancelot.

Many-tower’d Camelot.

’Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I.

The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.