James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Keble
He only who forgets to hoard has learned to live.
If thou wouldst reap in love, / First sow in holy fear; / So life a winter’s morn may prove / To a bright endless year.
Isaac’s fond blessing may not fall on scorn, / Nor Balaam’s curse on love which God hath blest.
Let not my bark in calm abide, / But win her cheerless way against the chafing tide.
Let present rapture, comfort, ease, / As heaven shall bid them, come and go; / The secret this of rest below.
Let the dainty rose awhile / Her bashful fragrance hide; / Rend not her silken veil too soon, / But leave her, in her own soft noon. / To flourish and abide.
Life’s ebbing stream on either side / Shows at each turn some mould’ring hope or joy, / The man seems following still the funeral of the boy.
Light flashes in the gloomiest sky, / And music in the dullest plain.
Live for to-day! to-morrow’s light, / To-morrow’s cares shall bring to sight; / Go sleep, like closing flowers, at night, / And Heaven thy morn will bless.
Love delights to bring her best, / And where love is, that offering evermore is blest.
Love too late can never glow.
Love yet lives, and patience shall find rest.
Men love us, or they need our love.
Mysterious to all thought, / A mother’s prime of bliss, / When to her eager lips is brought / Her infant’s thrilling kiss.
Never yet created eye / Could see across eternity.
No distance breaks the tie of blood: / Brothers are brothers evermore; / Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood, / That magic may o’erpower.
Nor by the wayside ruins let us mourn / Who have th’ eternal towers for our appointed bourne.
Nor e’en the tenderest heart, and next our own, / Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh!
O’ercome thyself, and thou may’st share / With Christ His Father’s throne, and wear / The world’s imperial wreath.
Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow— / Hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart.
Out path of glory / By many a cloud is darken’d and unblest.
Still to the lowly soul / He doth Himself impart, / And for His cradle and His throne / Chooseth the pure in heart.
Sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide / To light up worlds or wake an insect’s mirth.
The champion true / Loves victory more when, dim in view, / He sees her glories gild afar / The dusky edge of stubborn war, / Than if th’ untrodden bloodless field / The harvest of her laurels yield.
The clouds that wrap the setting sun / … Why, as we watch their floating wreath, / Seem they the breath of life to breathe? / To Fancy’s eye their motions prove / They mantle round the sun for love.
The course of prayer who knows?
The distant landscape draws not nigh / For all our gazing.
The heart of childhood is all mirth.
The trivial round, the common task, / Will furnish all we ought to ask, / Room to deny ourselves, a road / To bring us daily nearer God.
The watchful mother tarries nigh, / Though sleep has clos’d her infant’s eye.
The world’s a room of sickness, where each heart / Knows its own anguish and unrest! / The truest wisdom there, and noblest art, / Is his who skills of comfort best.
Then draw we nearer day by day, / Each to his brethren, all to God; / Let the world take us as she may, / We must not change our road.
There are in this loud stunning tide / Of human care and crime, / With whom the melodies abide / Of th’ everlasting chime; / Who carry music in their heart, / Through dusty lane and wrangling mart, / Plying their daily task with busier feet, / Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.
There is a book, who runs may read, / Which heavenly truth imparts, / And all the love its scholars need, / Pure eyes and Christian hearts. / The works of God above, below, / Within us, and around, / Are pages in that book, to show / How God Himself is found.
There’s a sweeter flower than e’er / Blush’d on the rosy spray, / A brighter star, a richer bloom, / Than e’er did western heaven illume / At close of summer day— / ’Tis Love, the last best gift of Heaven.
Thou, too curious ear, that fain / Wouldst thread the maze of Harmony, / Content thee with one simple strain, / … Till thou art duly trained, and taught / The concord sweet of Love divine.
Time’s waters will not ebb nor stay; / Power cannot change them, but Love may; / What cannot be, Love counts it done.
To holy tears, / In lonely hours, Christ risen appears; / In social hours, who Christ would see / Must turn all tasks to charity.
Too surely, every setting day, / Some lost delight we mourn.
We barter life for pottage.
We by Fancy may assuage / The festering sore by Fancy made.
We cannot pass our guardian angel’s bound, / Resign’d or sullen, he will hear our sighs.
What are all prayers beneath / But cries of babes, that cannot know / Half the deep thought they breathe?
What? wearied out with half a life? / Scared with this smooth unbloody strife? / Think where thy coward hopes had flown / Had Heaven held out the martyr’s crown.
When brothers part for manhood’s race, / What gift may most endearing prove / To keep fond memory in her place, / And certify a brother’s love? / … No fading frail memorial give / To sooth his soul when thou art gone, / But wreathes of hope for aye to live, / And thoughts of good together done.
When the shore is won at last, / Who will count the billows past?
While men sleep, / Sad-hearted mothers heave, that wakeful lie, / To muse upon some darling child / Roaming in youth’s uncertain wild.
Why should we faint and fear to live alone, / Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, / Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, / Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh?
Wouldst thou the life of souls discern? / Nor human wisdom nor divine / Helps thee by aught beside to learn; / Love is life’s only sign.