James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Lewis Morris
For age, long age! / Nought else divides us from the fresh young days / Which men call ancient.
For every dawn that breaks brings a new world, / And every budding bosom a new life.
For knowledge is a barren tree and bare, / Bereft of God, and duty but a word, / And strength but tyranny, and love, desire, / And purity a folly.
For knowledge is a steep which few may climb, / While duty is a path which all may tread.
For while a youth is lost in soaring thought, / And while a mind grows sweet and beautiful, / And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth, / And while a child, and while a flower is born, / And while one wrong cries for redress and finds / A soul to answer, still the world is young.
From out the throng and stress of lies, / From out the painful noise of sighs, / One voice of comfort seems to rise, / It is the meaner part that dies.
From the sum / Of duty, blooms sweeter and more divine / The fair ideal of the race, than comes / From glittering gains of learning.
Hell lies near, / Around us, as does heaven, and in the world, / Which is our Hades, still the chequered souls, / Compact of good and ill—not all accurst, / Nor altogether blest—a few brief years / Travel the little journey of their lives, / They know not to what end.
Life is act, and not to do is death.
Life, full life, / Full-flowered, full-fruited, reared from homely earth, / Rooted in duty,… this is the prize / I hold most dear, more precious than the fruit / Of knowledge or of love.
Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round / Of Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make / The orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly / Upon its path—the Lord of Life alone / Knows to what goal of Good; work on, live on.
Love is kin to duty.
Nay! evermore, / All things and thoughts, both new and old, are writ / Upon the unchanging human heart and soul.
Nay, let us seek at home to find / Fit harvest for the brooding mind, / And find, since thus the world grows fair, / Duty and pleasure everywhere.
Nought else there is / But that weird beat of Time, which doth disjoin / To-day from Hellas.
Oftentimes the gods send strong delusions to ensnare too credulous hearts.
Oh, love for ever lost, / And with it faith gone out! what is’t remains / But duty, though the path be rough and trod / By bruised and bleeding feet?
Only suffering draws / The inner heart of song, and can elicit / The perfumes of the soul.
Pity shapes not into syllogisms; / Nor can affection ape philosophy.
Rise, Christopher! thou hast found thy King, and turn / Back to the earth, for I have need of thee. / Thou hast sustained the whole world, bearing me, / The Lord of earth and heaven.
Sea things that be / On the hot sand fainting long, / Revive with the kiss of the sea.
Sorrow like this / Draws parted lives in one, and knits anew / The rents which time has made.
Still the sight of too great beauty blinds us, and we lose / The sense of earthly splendours, gaining heaven.
Still the skies are opened as of old / To the entrancèd gaze, ay, nearer far / And brighter than of yore.
The flute is sweet / To gods and men, but sweeter the lyre / And voice of a true singer.
The heart which truly loves puts not its love aside … but grows stronger for that which seeks to thwart it.
The slow wheel turns, / The cycles round themselves and grow complete, / The world’s year whitens to the harvest-tide, / And one word only am I (Psyche) sent to say … / To all things living, and the word is “Love.”
The soul, / The particle of God sent down to man, / Which doth in turn reveal the world and God.
There is a life which taketh not its hues / From earth or earthly things; and so grows pure / And higher than the petty cares of men, / And is a blessed life and glorified.
These fair tales, which we know so beautiful, / Show only finer than our lives to-day / Because their voice was clearer, and they found / A sacred bard to sing them.
This of old is sure, / That change of toil is toil’s sufficient cure.
Till the hand … from reed or string / Draws out faint echoes of the voice Divine / That bring God nearer to a faithless world.
To have heard the voice / Of Godhead in the winds and in the seas, / To have known him in the circling of the suns, / And in the changeful fates and lives of men.
To obey is the best grace of woman.
Waft yourselves, yearning souls, upon the stars; / Sow yourselves on the wandering winds of space; / Watch patient all your days, if your eyes take / Some dim, cold ray of knowledge. The dull world / Hath need of you—the purblind, slothful world!
We are ourselves / Our heaven and hell, the joy, the penalty, / The yearning, the fruition.
We are pent, / Who sing to-day, by all the garnered wealth / Of ages of past song.
We have no more / The world to choose from, who, where’er we turn, / Tread through old thoughts and fair. Yet must we sing— / We have no choice.
We in turn / Shall one day be Time’s ancients, and inspire / The wiser, higher race, which yet shall sing; / Because to sing is human, and high thought / Grows rhythmic ere its close.
We keep but what we give, / And only daily dying may we live.
What can Fate devise to vanquish Love?
What shall be, shall be—that is all; / To one great Will we stand and fall, / “The Scheme hath need”—we ask not why, / And in this faith we live or die.
Who the race of men doth love, / Loves also him above.
Woe, woe to youth, to life, which idly boasts, / I am the End, and mine the appointed Way.