60 quotes
There among the grass fell down,
By his own scythe, the mower mown.
She with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one
To live in paradise alone.
What need of all this marble crust
T’impark the wanton mote of dust.
He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene.
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)
'Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing Nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence.
Who can foretell for what high cause
This darling of the gods was born?
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
The Garden. Translated; Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
So much one man can do,
That does both act and know.
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)
And makes the hollow seas, that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel’s pearl upon our coast.
In busy companies of men.
How should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?
For Juliana comes, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.
Unhappy birds! what does it boot
To build below the grass’s root,
When lowness is unsafe as height,
And chance o’ertakes, what ’scapeth spite?
Music, the mosaic of the air.
Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.
Love's whole world on us doth wheel.