Quotes from Lalla Rookh — Thomas Moore
1779–1852 Ireland
36 quotes
The humble rosemary
Whose sweets so thanklessly are shed
To scent the desert and the dead.
A narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future, two eternities.
As sunshine, broken in the rill,
Though turn'd astray, is sunshine still!
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity.
How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms are gone.
The basil tuft, that waves
Its fragrant blossom over graves.
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die.
It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury.
But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.
Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit,
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future,—two eternities!
Oh! that a dream so sweet, so long enjoy'd,
Should be so sadly, cruelly destroy'd!
Like the stain'd web that whitens in the sun,
Grow pure by being purely shone upon.
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Moore (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.