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

Percival

Bird of the broad and sweeping wing,

Thy home is high in heaven,

Where wide the storms their banners fling,

And the tempest clouds are driven.

Happy the life, that in a peaceful stream,

Obscure, unnoticed through the vale has flow’d;

The heart that ne’er was charm’d by fortune’s gleam

Is ever sweet contentment’s blest abode.

Roses bloom, and then they wither;

Cheeks are bright, then fade and die;

Shapes of light are wafted hither,

Then, like visions, hurry by.

The recollection of one upward hour

Hath more in it to tranquilize and cheer

The darkness of despondency, than years

Of gayety and pleasure.

There is nothing but death

Our affections can sever,

And till life’s latest breath

Love shall bind us for ever.

Thought can wing its way

Swifter than lightning-flashes or the beam

That hastens on the pinions of the morn.

We met, and we drank from the crystalline well,

That flows from the fountains of science above;

On the beauties of thought we would silently dwell,

Till we look’d—though we never were talking of love.

Ye clouds, that are the ornament of heaven,

Who give to it its gayest shadowings

And its most awful glories; ye who roll

In the dark tempest, or at dewy evening

Bow low in tenderest beauty;—ye are to us

A volume full of wisdom.

How awful is that hour when conscience stings.

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.

In eastern lands they talk in flowers, and they tell in a garland their loves and cares.

Night steals on; and the day takes its farewell, like the words of a departing friend, or the last tone of hallowed music in a minster’s aisles, heard when it floats along the shade of elms, in the still place of graves.

She had grown, in her unstained seclusion, bright and pure as a first opening lilac, when it spreads its clear leaves to the sweetest dawn of May.

Sweet flower, thou tellest how hearts as pure and tender as thy leaf, as low and humble as thy stem, will surely know the joy that peace imparts.

The thundering voice that wrings, in one dark, damning moment, crimes of years!

The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.

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