Quotes
Quotes about Sin
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!--
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
A power is passing from the earth.
Mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is Love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast.
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source,
The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.
To all, to each! a fair good-night,
And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.
Where lives the man that has not tried
How mirth can into folly glide,
And folly into sin!
Nor sink those stars in empty night:
They hide themselves in heaven's own light.
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,--
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,--
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin,
That his favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility.
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
. . . . .
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
. . . . .
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,--
Therefore on him no speech! And brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with steps
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,--
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,--
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warm'd both hands against the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
But sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in.
If thou would'st have me sing and play
As once I play'd and sung,
First take this time-worn lute away,
And bring one freshly strung.
