54 quotes
When years have past
Over the fallen arch, the ruin'd hall,
It seems but course of time, the one great doom,
Whose influence is alike upon us all
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Well, read my cheek, and watch my eye,—
Too strictly school'd are they,
One secret of my soul to show,
One hidden thought betray.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
In this our social state, where petty cares
And mercenary interests only look
Upon the present's littleness, and shrink
From the bold future, and the stately past,—
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Alas! vows are his after sign!—
We prop the tree in its decline—
The ghosts that haunt a parting hour,
With all of grief, and nought of power;
A chain half sunder'd in the making,—
The plighted vow's already breaking.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
How noble and ennobling!—but within
How mean, how poor, how pitiful, how mix'd
With base alloy; how Disappointment tracks
The steps of Hope; how Envy dogs success;
How every victor's crown is lined with thorns,
And worn mid scoffs!
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
I can pass days
Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,—
The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,—
Each tree a natural harp,— each different leaf
A different note, blent in one vast thanks-giving.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Who has not loathed that worst, that waking hour,
When grief and consciousness assert their power;
When misery has morn's freshness, yet we fain
Would hold it as a dream, and sleep again
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
I speak of my own feelings—I can judge
Of others but by outward show, and that
Is falser than the actor's studied part.
We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes:
The mind is as the face—for who goes forth
In public walks without a veil at least?
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Methinks we must have known some former state
More glorious than our present, and the heart
Is haunted with dim memories, shadows left
By past magnificence; and hence we pine
With vain aspirings, hopes that fill the eyes
With bitter tears for their own vanity.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
There are remembrances that will not vanish,—
Thoughts of the past we would but cannot banish:
As if to show how impotent mere will,
We loathe the pang, and yet must suffer still:
For who is there can say they will forget?
—It is a power no science teaches yet.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Why should I love? flinging down pearl and gem
To those who scorn, at least care not for them:
Why should I hate? as blades in scabbards melt,
I have no power to make my hatred felt
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Who shall say
The love of genius is a common thing,
Such as the many feel—half selfishness,
Half vanity?—for genius is divine,
And, like a god, doth turn its dwelling-place
Into a temple; and the heart redeem'd
By its fine influence is immortal shrine
For love's divinity.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
The woman was in abject misery—that worst of poverty, which is haunted by shame—the only relic left by better days. She shrunk from all efforts at recovery, refused to administer the medicines, and spoke of the child's death but as a blessing.
My God! and is the daily page of life
Darken'd with wretchedness like this?
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Remembrance makes the poet; 'tis the past
Lingering within him, with a keener sense
Than is upon the thoughts of common men
Of what has been, that fills the actual world
With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes,
That were and are not; and the fairer they,
The more their contrast with existing things,
The more his power, the greater is his grief.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)