Quotes
Quotes about Wit
I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.
With just enough of learning to misquote.
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless.
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it?--No! 't was but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! They come! they come!"
Exhausting thought,
And hiving wisdom with each studious year.
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.
Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till--'t is gone, and all is gray.
Fills
The air around with beauty.
The starry Galileo with his woes.
History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page.
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column with the buried base.
Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin,--his control
Stops with the shore.
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy.
I wantoned with thy breakers,
. . . . .
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane,--as I do here.
She was a form of life and light
That seen, became a part of sight,
And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The morning-star of memory!
Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed farewell!
He left a corsair's name to other times,
Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes.
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.
