13 quotes
Fame is a food that dead men eat,—
I have no stomach for such meat.
Fame Is a Food That Dead Men Eat (1906)
Love comes unseen,—we only see it go.
Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societé (1873)
Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
Old-World Idylls and Other Verses (1883)
Carry his body hence,—
Kings must have slaves;
Kings climb to eminence
Over men's graves:
So this man's eye is dim;—
Throw the earth over him.
Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societé (1873)
In merest prudence men should teach […]
That science ranks as monstrous things
Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings—
E'en angels' wings!—are fictions.
At the Sign of the Lyre (1885)
All passes. ART alone
Enduring stays to us:
The Bust out-lasts the throne,—
The Coin, Tiberius.
Old-World Idylls and Other Verses (1883)
Not as ours the books of old—
Things that steam can stamp and fold;
Not as ours the books of yore—
Rows of type, and nothing more.
And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak—a worn and shattered row:
I am a Shade: a Shadowe too arte thou:
I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?
Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societé (1873)
O English girl, divine, demure,
To YOU I sing!
Old-World Idylls and Other Verses (1883)
Ah, kinder far than thy fell philtres, Circe,
The ravening Cyclops and the Læstrigon!
All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,—
More had not Alcinoüs!
At the Sign of the Lyre (1885)
Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;—
All things, in short, to which belong
The charm, the grace that Time makes strong,—
All these I prize, but (entre nous)
Old friends are best.
To Richard Watson Gilder (1884)
The ladies of St. James’s!
They’re painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever
Their red it never dies:
But Phillida, my Phillida!
Her colour comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,—
It wavers to a rose.
At the Sign of the Lyre (1885)