17 quotes
For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years?
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
What good, what use, what aim?
What compensation for the throes of birth
And death in all its frame?
What conscious life hath ever paid its cost?
From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!
And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanish
In that sweet sleep no power can ever banish,
That one best sleep which never wakes again.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.
Sunday Up the River (1865)
We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!
Sunday at Hampstead (1863)
Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, O my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
At home, on land, on sea.
Sunday Up the River (1865)
The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
As we rush, as we rush in the train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above that plain
Come flying on our track.
Sunday at Hampstead (1863)
The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night seems termless hell.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
The mighty river flowing dark and deep,
With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides,
Vague-sounding through the City’s sleepless sleep,
Is named the River of the Suicides.
The City of Dreadful Night (1870)
The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long: Sits long and rises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.
Sunday Up the River (1865)
In order to ensure absolute equality (which perchance cannot co-exist with essential distinctions) the new race may demand .either that sex be abolished, or that every human being be of both sexes. Perhaps the very perfecting process will either unsex or androgynise its subject, so that all alike shall be regenerated either neutral or epicene.
Essays and Phantasies (1881)
But, so far as we can see, so long as the present laws and constitution of nature continue there must still remain a vast amount of really inevitable suffering for mankind, without reckoning beastkind, birdkind, fishkind, insectkind, reptilekind, plant- kind, and leaving quite out of discussion stonekind.
Essays and Phantasies (1881)