Quotes
Quotes about Light
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.
Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.
Forward, till you see the Highest Human Nature is divine.
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.
For I say this is death and the sole death,--
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
The starlight of heaven above us shall quiver
As our souls flow in one down eternity's river.
O Light divine! we need no fuller test
That all is ordered well;
We know enough to trust that all is best
Where Love and Wisdom dwell.
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.
I sing New England, as she lights her fire
In every Prairie's midst; and where the bright
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night,
She still is there, the guardian on the tower,
To open for the world a purer hour.
Still, as I mused, the naked room,
The alien firelight died away;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright, unclouded day.
In the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws.
Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw--
Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,--
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.
This child is not mine as the first was;
I can not sing it to rest;
I can not lift it up fatherly,
And bless it upon my breast.
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.
There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
All, all for immortality,
Love like the light silently wrapping all.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed;
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.
You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you can not turn to other account than mere delight.
Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?
Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown;
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
