655 quotes
Delicious tears! the heart's own dew.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
The loorie brought to his cinnamon nest.
The bee from the midst of its honey quest,
And open the leaves of the lotus lay
To welcome the noon of the summer day.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
How I pity those whose childhood has been unhappy! to them one of the sweetest springs of feeling has been utterly denied, the most green and beautiful part of life laid waste.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
The first step towards establishing pretensions of any kind, is to believe firmly in them yourself: faith is very catching, and half the beauty-reputations of which I hear have originated with the possessors.
Though many a flower may win my praise,
The violet has my love;
I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove:
My garden was the window-seat,
Upon whose edge was set
A little vase—the fair, the sweet—
It was the violet.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
It was an epoch in my life, it is an epoch in every child's life, the first reading of Robinson Crusoe.
…had that worst bump developed that can adorn the head of a bore—viz., long-story-tellativeness.
As steals the dew along the flower,
So stole thy smile on me ;
I cannot tell the day, nor hour
I first loved thee !
'Tis not for Spring to think on all
The sear and waste of Autumn's fall: —
The Troubadour (1825)
Good and evil ! good and evil ! ye are mingled inextricably in the web of our being ; and who may unthread the darker yarn ?
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)
Oh, glory of the morning!
Oh, ye gifted, young, and brave!
What end have ye, but midnight;
What find ye but the grave ?
The Golden Violet (1827)
The field is fought—who walketh there?—
The shadow victory casts—Despair!
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
By turns the woman and the queen,
And each as the other had never been.
Bright El Dorado, land of gold,
We have so sought for thee,
There's not a spot in all the globe
Where such a land can be.
It is a sweet, albeit most painful, feeling
To know we are regretted.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
Come, gentle harp, and let me hold
Communion with thy melody,
And be my tale of sorrow told
To thee, my harp, and only thee.
Experience has rude lessons, and we grow
Like what we have been taught too late to know,
And yet we hate ourselves for being so.
… and French and Italian were, it must be owned, somewhat unnecessary to one who considered her own language an unnecessary fatigue.
Romance and Reality (1831)
What though our passing day but be
A bubble on eternity;
Small though the circle is, yet still
’Tis ours to colour at our will.
Oh never another dream can be
Like that early dream of ours,
When the fairy Hope lay down to sleep,
Like a child, among the flowers.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)