O beautiful, awful summer day, what hast thou given, what taken away?
Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears.
O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet.
Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.
O lovely eyes of azure, Clear as the waters of a brook that run Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!
Then stars arise, and the night is holy.
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again.
The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind’s breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm, and self-possessed.
All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.
The heaven of poetry and romance still lies around us and within us.
By unseen hands uplifted in the light Of sunset, yonder solitary cloud Floats, with its white apparel blown abroad, And wafted up to heaven.
Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.
Prayer is innocence’s friend; and willingly flieth incessant ’twist the earth and the sky, the carrier-pigeon of heaven.
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.
Life like an empty dream flits by.
The hearts of some women tremble like leaves at every breath of love which reaches them, and they are still again. Others, like the ocean, are moved only by the breath of a storm, and not so easily lulled to rest.