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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Eliza Cook

  • A cheer for the snow—the drifting snow;
  • Smoother and purer than Beauty’s brow;
  • The creature of thought scarce likes to tread
  • On the delicate carpet so richly spread.
  • With feathery wreaths the forest is bound,
  • And the hills are with glittering diadems crown’d:
  • ’Tis the fairest scene we can have below.
  • Sing, welcome, then, to the drifting snow!
  • Bring the tulip and the rose,
  • While their brilliant beauty glows.
  • But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born,
  • And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn;
  • She moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, half divine,
  • And cries, exulting, “Who can make a gentleman like mine?”
  • I miss thee, my mother! thy image is still
  • The deepest impress’d on my heart,
  • And the tablet so faithful in death must be chill,
  • Ere a line of that image depart.
  • I miss thee, my mother, when young health has fled,
  • And I sink in the languor of pain,
  • Where, where is the arm that once pillowed my head,
  • And the ear that once heard me complain?
  • Other hands may support me, gentle accents may fall—
  • For the fond and the true are still mine:
  • I’ve a blessing for each; I am grateful to all,—
  • But whose care can be soothing as thine?
  • In desert winds, in midnight gloom;
  • In grateful joy, in trying pain;
  • In laughing youth, or nigh the tomb;
  • Oh! when is prayer unheard or vain?
  • Oh! never breathe a dead one’s name,
  • When those who lov’d that one are nigh;
  • It pours a lava through the frame
  • That chokes the breast and fills the eye.
  • Oh, how cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
  • When Memory plays an old tune on the heart!
  • The coward wretch whose hand and heart
  • Can bear to torture aught below,
  • Is ever first to quail and start
  • From slightest pain or equal foe.
  • There are some spirits nobly just, unwarp’d by pelf or pride,
  • Great in the calm, but greater still when dash’d by adverse tide;—
  • They hold the rank no king can give, no station can disgrace;
  • Nature puts forth her gentleman, and monarchs must give place.
  • There’s one whose fearless courage yet has never failed in fight;
  • Who guards with zeal our country’s weal, our freedom, and our right;
  • But though his strong and ready arm spreads havoc in its blow;
  • Cry “Quarter!” and that arm will be the first to spare its foe.
  • He recks not though proud Glory’s shout may be the knell of death;
  • The triumph won, without a sigh he yields his parting breath.
  • He’s Britain’s boast, and claims a toast! “In peace, my boys, or war,
  • Here’s to the brave upon the wave, the gallant English Tar.”
  • Tree of the gloom, o’erhanging the tomb,
  • Thou seem’st to love the churchyard sod;
  • Thou ever art found on the charnel ground,
  • Where the laughing and happy have rarely trod.
  • When thy branches trail to the wintry gale,
  • Thy wailing is sad to the hearts of men;
  • When the world is bright in a summer’s light,
  • ’Tis only the wretched that love thee then.
  • The golden moth and the shining bee
  • Will seldom rest on the Willow-tree.
  • Truth! Truth! where is the sound
  • Of thy calm, unflatt’ring voice to be found?
  • We may go to the Senate, where Wisdom rules,
  • And find but deceiv’d or deceiving fools:
  • Who dare trust the sages of old,
  • When one shall unsay what another has told?
  • And even the lips of childhood and youth
  • But rarely echo the tone of Truth.
  • Where is the one who hath not had
  • Some anguish-trial, long gone by,
  • Steal, spectre-like, all dark and sad
  • On busy thought, till the full eye
  • And aching breast, betray’d too well,
  • The past still held undying spell?
  • Both beauty and ugliness are equally to be dreaded; the one as a dangerous gift, the other as a melancholy affliction.

    Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.

    I prize the soul that slumbers in a quiet eye.

    So live, that thy young and glowing breast can think of death without a sigh.

    There spring the wild-flowers—fair as can be.

    While the dog-roses blow and the dew-spangles shine.