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

Jean Ingelow

  • And O the buttercups! that field
  • O’ the cloth of gold, where pennons swam—
  • Where France set up his lilied shield,
  • His oriflamb,
  • And Henry’s lion-standard rolled:
  • What was it to their matchless sheen,
  • Their million million drops of gold
  • Among the green!
  • Children, ay, forsooth
  • They bring their own love with them when they come,
  • But if they come not there is peace and rest;
  • The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more;
  • Why, the world’s full of them, and so is heaven—
  • They are not rare.
  • For hearts where wakened love doth lurk,
  • How fine, how blest a thing is work!
  • For work does good when reasons fail.
  • Her face betokened all things dear and good,
  • The light of somewhat yet to come was there
  • Asleep, and waiting for the opening day,
  • When childish thoughts, like flowers, would drift away.
  • How short our happy days appear!
  • How long the sorrowful!
  • I opened the doors of my heart.
  • And behold,
  • There was music within and a song,
  • And echoes did feed on the sweetness, repeating it long.
  • I opened the doors of my heart. And behold,
  • There was music that played itself out in æolian notes:
  • Then was heard, as a far-away bell at long intervals tolled.
  • Man dwells apart, though not alone,
  • He walks among his peers unread;
  • The best of thoughts which he hath known,
  • For lack of listeners are not said.
  • Man is the miracle in nature. God
  • Is the One Miracle to man. Behold,
  • “There is a God,” thou sayest. Thou sayest well:
  • In that thou sayest all. To Be is more
  • Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought,
  • Or reigned, or rested.
  • O sleep! O sleep!
  • Do not forget me. Sometimes come and sweep,
  • Now I have nothing left, thy healing hand
  • Over the lids that crave thy visits bland,
  • Thou kind, thou comforting one.
  • For I have seen his face, as I desired,
  • And all my story is done.
  • O, I am tired.
  • O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep;
  • Thou bearest angels to us in the night,
  • Saints out of heaven with palms. Seen by thy light
  • Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep;
  • Love is a pouting child.
  • O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile:
  • So have all sages said, all poets sung.
  • Sorrows humanize our race;
  • Tears are the showers that fertilize this world.
  • The moon is bleached as white as wool,
  • And just dropping under;
  • Every star is gone but three,
  • And they hang far asunder,—
  • There’s a sea-ghost all in gray,
  • A tall shape of wonder!
  • The prayer of Noah,
  • He cried out in the darkness, Hear, O God,
  • Hear Him: hear this one; through the gates of death,
  • If life be all past praying for, O give
  • To Thy great multitude a way to peace;
  • Give them to Him.
  • The roses that in yonder hedge appear
  • Outdo our garden-buds which bloom within;
  • But since the hand may pluck them every day,
  • Unmarked they bud, bloom, drop, and drift away.
  • We are much bound to them that do succeed;
  • But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound
  • To such as fail. They all our loss expound;
  • They comfort us for work that will not speed,
  • And life—itself a failure.
  • We know they music made
  • In heaven, ere man’s creation;
  • But when God threw it down to us that strayed,
  • It dropt with lamentation,
  • And ever since doth its sweetness shade
  • With sighs for its first station.
  • What change has made the pastures sweet
  • And reached the daisies at my feet,
  • And cloud that wears a golden hem?
  • This lovely world, the hills, the sward—
  • They all look fresh, as if our Lord
  • But yesterday had finished them.
  • What is thy thought? There is no miracle?
  • There is a great one, which thou hast not read,
  • And never shalt escape. Thyself, O man,
  • Thou art the miracle. Ay, thou thyself,
  • Being in the world and of the world, thyself,
  • Hast breathed in breath from Him that made the world.
  • Thou art thy Father’s copy of Himself,—
  • Thou art thy Father’s miracle.
  • When I remember something which I had,
  • But which is gone, and I must do without,
  • I sometimes wonder how I can be glad,
  • Even in cowslip time when hedges sprout;
  • It makes me sigh to think on it,—but yet
  • My days will not be better days, should I forget.
  • When our thoughts are born,
  • Though they be good and humble, one should mind
  • How they are reared, or some will go astray
  • And shame their mother.
  • Work is its own best earthly meed,
  • Else have we none more than the sea-born throng
  • Who wrought those marvellous isles that bloom afar.
  • Youth! youth! how buoyant are thy hopes! they turn,
  • Like marigolds, toward the sunny side.
  • I am athirst for God, the living God.

    People newly emerged from obscurity generally launch out into indiscriminate display.

    There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover; there’s no rain left in heaven.