655 quotes
Where had thy life been at this hour,
Had not my Love been more than my Power ? —
Away, if thou fearest, — love never must,
Never can live with one shade of distrust.
Black and more black the midnight grew,
Black and more black was the water’s hue ;
Then a ghastly sound on the silence broke,
And I thought of the dead beneath the oak.
He enter'd now the garden, and a fall
Of singing, voice and lute, sank on his ear :
At first it seem'd thrice sweet and musical,
But it grew sadder as he came more near.
The past is the poet's,—that world is his own;
Thence hath his music its truth and its tone.
He calls up the shadows of ages long fled,
And light, as life lovely, illumines the dead.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
... but the waters of life are for ever flowing onwards, and little trace do they bear of what clouds have darkened or reddened the waves below as they floated by.
Ah, human felicity! to have at once so many wants suggested and supplied! Wretched Grecian daughters! miserable Roman matrons! to whom shopping was an unknown pleasure, what did, what could employ them?
Romance and Reality (1831)
Once more my harp awakens ; once again,
Tho' all unworthy be my hand to twine
Th' etherial blossomings of poetry,
I would call forth its numbers, yet would feel
Its music fall like sunlight on my soul.
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)
It was a beautiful embodied thought,
A dream of the fine painter, one of those
That pass by moonlight o'er the soul, and flit
'Mid the dim shades of twilight, when the eye
Grows tearful with its ecstasy.
It is a fact, that though a Scotchman be the most locomotive of individuals — there is scarcely a habitable part of the globe where he is not to be found — yet nothing ever weakens his attachment to his country.
Which is the best,
Beauty and glory in a passionate clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; — or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change — which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?
Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!
The Improvisatrice (1824)
I do love violets:
They tell the history of woman's love;
They open with the earliest breath of spring;
Lead a sweet life of perfume, dew, and light;
And, if they perish, perish with a sigh
Delicious as that life.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
How different too would the real character be from that which is assumed ; how little often do the most intimate know of each other. But the difference that the stranger might discover is nothing to that which we trace in ourselves.
Its berries are red as a maiden's lip,
Its leaves are of changeless green ;
And any thing changeless now, I wis,
Is somewhat rare to be seen.
The holly, which fall and frost has borne,
The holly's the wreath for a Christmas morn.
Her face was all too bright for tears, she gave
Sighs to the wind, and weeping to the wave,
And left a lesson unto after-times,
Too little dwelt upon in minstrel rhymes,
A lesson how inconstancy should be
Repaid again by like inconstancy.
To what may youth's first joyance be compared ?
To daylight, and the glad song of the lark
Bursting together, — to a sudden gush
Of perfume, till the giddy senses link
With overmuch delight,— a dream,— a tale
Of Paradise, told in fair poesy.
Voiture belonged to a race of poets essentially French, who sacrificed to the Graces instead of the Muses; to whom Cupid, with his wings and arrows, was the ideal of love, and whose art of poetry consisted in epigram, tournure, readiness, and facility.
Francesca Carrara (1834)
Lay her in the gentle earth,
Where the summer maketh mirth ;
Where young violets have birth ;
Where the lily bendeth.
Lay her there, the lovely one !
With the rose, her funeral stone ;
And for tears, such showers alone
As the rain of April lendeth.
A word — a name —
Conjures the past before me, till it grows
More actual than the present : that — I see
But with the common eyes of daily life,
Imperfect and impatient ; but the past
Out of imagination works its truth,
And grows distinct with poetry.
There are a thousand fanciful things
Linked round the young heart's imaginings.
In its first love-dream, a leaf or a flower
Is gifted then with a spell and a power:
A shade is an omen, a dream is a sign,
From which the maiden can well divine
Passion's whole history.
The Improvisatrice (1824)