237 quotes
Her cabin'd ample spirit,
It fluttered and fail'd for breath;
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.
The steel-spik’d spear
Rent the tough plates, but fail’d to reach the skin.
Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)
But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon choked souls to fill.
I too have long'd for trenchant force,
And will like a dividing spear;
Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course
Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.
O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!
Rugby Chapel (1867)
’Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, the Nine.
—The leader is fairest,
But all are divine.
Empedocles on Etna (1852)
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
I will not say that thou wast true,
Yet let me say that thou wast fair!
And they that lovely face who view,
They should not ask if truth be there.
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)
Was Christ a man like us? — Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!
Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate.
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
Hark! ah, the nightingale —
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! — what pain!
Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd —
I come not here to be your foe!
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)
Such a price
The Gods exact for song;
To become what we sing.
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)
Ere the parting kiss be dry,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)
For a cloud
Grew suddenly in Heaven, and darked the sun.
Sohrab and Rustum (1853)
Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.