Familiar Quotations Part 95

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.

_Richelieu_. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.

_Festus_.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the n.o.blest, acts the best.

THOMAS K. HERVEY.

_The Devil's Progress_.

The tomb of him who would have made The world too glad and free.

He stood beside a cottage lone, And listened to a lute, One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone, And the nightingale was mute!

Like s.h.i.+ps, that sailed for sunny isles, But never came to sh.o.r.e!

JAMES ALDRICH.

_A Death-Bed_.

Her suffering ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away, In statue-like repose!

But when the sun, in all his state, Illumined the eastern skies, She pa.s.sed through Glory's morning gate, And walked in Paradise.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

_Thanatopsis_.

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.

Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.

Sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch.

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

_March_.

The stormy March has come at last, With wind and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rus.h.i.+ng of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

_Autumn Woods_.

But 'neath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.

_Forest Hymn_.

The groves were G.o.d's first temples.

_The Death of the Flowers_.

The melancholy days are come, The saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, And meadows brown and sear.