655 quotes
You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
And say, that my castles are built but on sand ;
Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand.
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)
The future! ah, there hath the spirit its home,
In its distance is written the glorious to come.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Oh, weary day that seemed so long!
Oh, hours that dragged their weight along!
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Ah, minstrel song hath many wings!
From foreign lands its wealth it brings.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
A luxury of deep repose ! the heart
Must surely beat in quiet here.
... for our English grumbling is equally distributed between the weather and politics, and the case would be desperate when confined to the last.
Romance and Reality (1831)
The past! ah, we owe it a tenderer debt,
Heaven's own sweetest mercy is not to forget;
Its influence softens the present, and flings
A grace, like the ivy, wherever it clings.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation.
Romance and Reality (1831)
The first, the very first; oh! none
Can feel again as they have done;
In love, in war, in pride, in all
The planets of life's coronal,
However beautiful or bright,—
What can be like their first sweet light?
The Troubadour (1825)
Our sky has lost another star,
The earth has claimed its own,
And into dread eternity
A glorious one is gone.
He who could give departed things
So much of light and breath,
He is himself now with the past —
Gone forth from life to death.
A light is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful--and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
THE quiet of the evening hour
Was laid on every summer leaf;
That purple shade was on each flower,
At once so beautiful, so brief,
Only the aspen knew not rest,
But still, with an unquiet song,
Kept murmuring to the gentle west,
And cast a changeful shade along.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
When every worldly thought is utterly forsaken,
Comes the starry midnight, felt by life's gifted few;
Then will the spirit from its earthly sleep awaken
To a being more intense, more spiritual and true.
So doth the soul awaken,
Like that youth to night's fair queen !
Oh sun, how glad thy rays are shed;
How canst thou glory o’er the dead?
Ah, folly this of human pride,
What are the dead to one like thee,
Whose mirror is the mighty tide,
Where time flows to eternity?
A single race, a single age,
What are they in thy pilgrimage?
What! still retaining your Utopian visions of female felicity? To talk of our happiness! — ours, the ill-used and oppressed! You remind me of the ancient tyrant, who, seeing his slaves sink under the weight of their chains, said 'Do look at the indolent repose of those people!'
Romance and Reality (1841)
They say suppers are very unwholesome, our grandfathers and grandmothers never discovered it ...
Teach it me, if you can,—forgetfulness!
I surely shall forget, if you can bid me
The Golden Violet (1827)
Of all the months that fill the year
Give April's month to me,
For earth and sky are then so filled
With sweet variety !
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
But who e'er turned from beauty's ray
For fear of future shade;
Or who e'er flung a rose away
Because that rose might fade.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Night came—the deep and purple time
Of summer in a southern clime.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)