55 quotes
What probing deep
Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
That was indeed to live—
At one bold swoop to wrest
From darkling death the best
That Death to Life can give!
Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.[…] The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Good night! I have to say good night,
To such a host of peerless things!
So precious life is! Even to the old
The hours are as a miser’s coins!
Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
When Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence.
An Old Town by the Sea (1893)
He has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Books that have become classics—books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal—always remind me of venerable colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows
In yonder West: the fair, frail palaces,
The fading Alps and archipelagoes,
And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind,—and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait
At the portcullis, at thy castle gate,
Longing to see the charmèd door of dreams
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in fairyland.
An Old Town by the Sea (1893)