16 quotes
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
Voices of the Night (1839)
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Voices of the Night (1839)
Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Voices of the Night (1839)
Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,—
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
Voices of the Night (1839)
The hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us further than to-day.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Voices of the Night (1839)
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
Voices of the Night (1839)
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Travelling o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Voices of the Night (1839)
The star of the unconquered will.
Voices of the Night (1839)
I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!
Voices of the Night (1839)
Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
'Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
Voices of the Night (1839)