Bayard Taylor Quotes
1825–1878 United States
Bayard Taylor (11 January 1825 – 19 December 1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat.
- United States
- 19th-century poets
- Journalists
- Novelists
- Poets
Also known as: Taylor, Bayard
Random Bayard Taylor quote
40 quotes
The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one,
In the slow process of the doubtful years.
The hearts that dare are quick to feel;
The hands that wound are soft to heal.
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Bedouin Song (1853)
By Wisdom wealth is won;
But riches purchased wisdom yet for none.
Our life is scarce the twinkle of a star
In God's eternal day.
I know I am—that simplest bliss
The millions of my brothers miss.
I know the fortune to be born,
Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.
Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle
Such are the sea-fruits lasses love:
Ho! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle,
And the shutterless cottages gleam above!
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
But still I dream that somewhere there must be
The spirit of a child that waits for me.
And Rest, that strengthens unto virtuous deeds,
Is one with Prayer.
For life lives only in success.
There's a pang in all rejoicing,
And a joy in the heart of pain;
And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
Are singing the selfsame strain.
They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain's glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang Annie Lawrie.
The Song of the Camp (1856)
Now the frosty stars are gone:
I have watched them one by one,
Fading on the shores of Dawn.
Round and full the glorious sun
Walks with level step the spray,
Through his vestibule of Day.
Yes, let the Angel blow!
A peal from the parted heaven,
The first of seven!—
The warning, not yet the sign, of woe!
That men arise
And look about them with wakened eyes,
Behold on their garments the dust and slime,
Refrain, forbear,
Accept the weight of a nobler care
And take reproach from the fallen time!
Sometimes an hour of Fate's serenest weather
Strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams;
Somewhere above us, in elusive ether,
Waits the fulfilment of our dearest dreams.
I am bare
As a new-born soul, — I am naught:
My deeds are dust in air,
My words are ghosts of thought.
I ride through the night alone,
Detached from the life that seemed,
And the best I have felt or known
Is less than the least I dreamed.
The Guests of Night (1871)
All, wherein I have part,
All that was loss or gain, Slips from the clasping heart,
Breaks from the grasping brain. Lo, what is left? I am bare
As a new-born soul, — I am naught:
My deeds are dust in air,
My words are ghosts of thought.
I ride through the night alone,
Detached from the life that seemed,
And the best I have felt or known
Is less than the least I dreamed.
The Guests of Night (1871)
Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance,
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air,
Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests,
Seats of the gods in the limitless ether,
Looming sublimely aloft and afar.
No visitors shall yonder valley find.
Except the spirits of the rain and wind:
Here you must bide, my friends, with me entombed
In this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.
The Poet's Journal (1863)