Quotes
Quotes about Light
Sparkling and bright in liquid light
Does the wine our goblets gleam in;
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.
As the diamond is the crystalline Revelator of the achromatic white light of Heaven, so is a perfect poem the crystalline revelation of the Divine Idea.
The corn was springing fresh and green,
And the lark sang loud and high,
And the red was on your lip, Mary,
And the love-light in your eye.
The prayer of Ajax was for light.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore;
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!
We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
Since first beneath the chestnut-tree
In fancy we played
But coldness dwells within thine heart
A cloud is on thy brow.
We have been friends together,--
Shall a light word part us now?
Too innocent for coquetry, too fond for idle scorning--
Oh friend, I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning.
O Twilight! Spirit that dost render birth
To dim enchantments; melting heaven with earth,
Leaving on craggy hills and running streams
A softness like the atmosphere of dreams.
Our fathers' God, to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee I sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by thy might,
Great God, our King!
Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, sir, I say:
Colors seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.
The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.
The hills of manhood wear a noble face
When seen from far;
The mist of light from which they take their grace
Hides what they are.
Ah, when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments;
And much delight of battle with my peers
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
Wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne.
A damsel of high lineage, and a brow
May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-blossom,
Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower.
