book ii
. chap. xi._
[632-3] See Crabbe, page 444.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON). 1809-1885.
But on and up, where Nature's heart Beats strong amid the hills.
_Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube. Stanza 2._
Great thoughts, great feelings came to them, Like instincts, unawares.
_The Men of Old._
A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet.
_The Men of Old._
I wandered by the brookside, I wandered by the mill; I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still.
_The Brookside._
The beating of my own heart Was all the sound I heard.
_The Brookside._
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 1809- ----.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky.
_Old Ironsides._
Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!
_Old Ironsides._
Like sentinel and nun, they keep Their vigil on the green.
_The Cambridge Churchyard._
The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.
_The Last Leaf._
I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!
_The Last Leaf._
Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way.
_To an Insect._
Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
_The Music-Grinders._
You think they are crusaders sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of sentiment And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody And break the legs of Time.
_The Music-Grinders._
And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can.
_The Height of the Ridiculous._
When the last reader reads no more.
_The Last Reader._
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
_Poetry, a Metrical Essay._
'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow, Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow.
_A Sentiment._
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
And when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.
_A Rhymed Lesson. Urania._
Thine eye was on the censer, And not the hand that bore it.
_Lines by a Clerk._
Where go the poet's lines? Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers!
_The Poet's Lot._
A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!
_The Voiceless._
O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses!
_The Voiceless._
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
_The Chambered Nautilus._
His home! the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; This little speck, the British Isles? 'T is but a freckle,--never mind it.
_A Good Time going._
But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
_A Good Time going._
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he 's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
_The Boys._
Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin; A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.
_How not to settle it._
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. i._
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
There is that glorious epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the historian,[637-1] in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men:[638-1] "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You could n't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
Knowledge and timber should n't be much used till they are seasoned.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. vi._
The hat is the _ultimum moriens_ of respectability.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. viii._
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
_On the Seventieth Birthday of Julia Ward Howe_ (_May 27, 1889_).
FOOTNOTES:
[637-1] John Lothrop Motley.
Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things."--PLUTARCH: _On the Love of Wealth._
[638-1] Thomas G. Appleton.
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1809- ----.
Our Country,--whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less,--still our Country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
_Toast at Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July, 1845._
A star for every State, and a State for every star.
_Address on Boston Common in 1862._
There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism.
_Letter to Boston Commercial Club in 1879._
The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want exasperated into crime.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,--all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
_Yorktown Oration in 1881._
JAMES ALDRICH. 1810-1856.
Her suffering ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose.
_A Death-Bed._
But when the sun in all his state Illumed the eastern skies, She passed through Glory's morning-gate, And walked in Paradise.
_A Death-Bed._
THEODORE PARKER. 1810-1860.
There is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,--that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God. For shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.[639-1]
_Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850._
FOOTNOTES:
[639-1] See Daniel Webster, page 532.
EDMUND H. SEARS. 1810-1876.
Calm on the listening ear of night Come Heaven's melodious strains, Where wild Judea stretches far Her silver-mantled plains.
_Christmas Song._
It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old.
_The Angels' Song._
MARTIN F. TUPPER. 1810-1889.
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure.
_Of Education._
God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love.
_Of Immortality._
EDGAR A. POE. 1811-1849.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,-- Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
_The Raven._
Whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster.
_The Raven._
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
_The Raven._
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--Nevermore!
_The Raven._
To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
_To Helen._
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1811-1884.
Revolutions are not made; they come.
_Speech, Jan. 28, 1852._
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
_Speech, Dec. 21, 1855._
One on God's side is a majority.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
_Speech, Nov. 1, 1859._
Revolutions never go backward.
_Speech, Feb. 12, 1861._
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. 1811- ----.
A sacred burden is this life ye bear: Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
_Lines addressed to the Young Gentlemen leaving the Lenox Academy, Mass._
Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart, that if believed Had blessed one's life with true believing.
_Faith._
BARTHOLOMEW DOWLING.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady! 'T is all we have left to prize. A cup to the dead already,-- Hurrah for the next that dies![641-1]
_Revelry in India._
FOOTNOTES:
[641-1] This quatrain appears with variations in several stanzas. "The poem," says Mr. Rossiter Johnson in "Famous Single and Fugitive Poems," "is persistently attributed to Alfred Domett; but in a letter to me, Feb. 6, 1879, he says: 'I did not write that poem, and was never in India in my life. I am as ignorant of the authorship as you can be.'"
ALFRED DOMETT. 1811- ----.
It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars, Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain; Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars Held undisturbed their ancient reign In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago.
_Christmas Hymn._
JULIA A. FLETCHER (NOW MRS. CARNEY).
Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land. So the little minutes, humble though they be, Make the mighty ages of eternity.
_Little Things, 1845._
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love, Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
_Little Things, 1845._
AUSTEN H. LAYARD. ---- -1894.
I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.[642-1]
_Speech in Parliament, Jan. 15, 1855._[642-2]
FOOTNOTES:
[642-1] See Sydney Smith, page 461.
[642-2] This speech is reported in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077.
ROBERT BROWNING. 1812-1890.
Any nose May ravage with impunity a rose.
_Sordello. Book vi ._
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.
_Paracelsus. Part i ._
Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
_Paracelsus.