Quotes
Quotes about Light
Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the nights.
My soul is full of whispered song,--
My blindness is my sight;
The shadows that I feared so long
Are full of life and light.
The world's as ugly, ay, as Sin,--
And almost as delightful.
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day and wish 't were done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.
The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.
The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon's height
Is not so sweet and white
As the most heretofore sin-spotted Soul
That darts to its delight
Straight from the absolution of a faithful fight.
Life is not life at all without delight.
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine
Like quiet night;
Lead me, O Lord,--till perfect Day shall shine
Through Peace to Light.
It beckons, I follow.
Good-by to the light,
I am going, O whither?
Out into the night.
The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight;
The time has come when the darkies have to part:
Then my old Kentucky home, good night!
Just take a trifling handful, O philosopher!
Of magic matter: give it a slight toss over
The ambient ether--and I don't see why
You should n't make a sky.
Of nothing comes nothing: springs rise not above
Their source in the far-hidden heart of the mountains:
Whence then have descended the Wisdom and Love
That in man leap to light in intelligent fountains?
If you will observe, it does n't take
A man of giant mould to make
A giant shadow on the wall;
And he who in our daily sight
Seems but a figure mean and small,
Outlined in Fame's illusive light,
May stalk, a silhouette sublime,
Across the canvas of his time.
I keep some portion of my early gleam;
Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river,
It lights my life, a far illusive dream,
Moves as I move, and leads me on forever.
I have been here before,
But when or how I can not tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
If the light is
It is because God said ‘Let there be light.'
Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight!
Make me a child again, just for to-night!
Is there beyond the silent night
An endless day?
Is death a door that leads to light?
We cannot say.
Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,
Slipped from my hold--thus plenty comes and goes.
One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand
(Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.
The wind that sighs before the dawn
Chases the gloom of night,
The curtains of the East are drawn,
And suddenly--'t is light.
A little work, a little play
To keep us going--and so good-day!
A little warmth, a little light
Of love's bestowing--and so, good-night.
A little fun, to match the sorrow
Of each day's growing--and so, good-morrow!
A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing--and so--good-bye!
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.
