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Home  »  Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical  »  Thomas Love Peacock

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

Thomas Love Peacock

  • Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven,
  • Curtain round the vault of heaven.
  • Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand
  • Waves o’er the world, and beckons us away.
  • Who shall resist the summons?
  • Dreams, which, beneath the hov’ring shades of night,
  • Sport with the ever-restless minds of men,
  • Descend not from the gods. Each busy brain
  • Creates its own.
  • He bore a simple wild-flower wreath:
  • Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose;
  • Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe
  • Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
  • With purple bells; the amaranth bright,
  • That no decay, nor fading knows,
  • Like true love’s holiest, rarest light;
  • And every purest flower, that blows
  • In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
  • When spring on summer’s confines presses.
  • How troublesome is day!
  • It calls us from our sleep away;
  • It bids us from our pleasant dreams awake,
  • And sends us forth to keep or break
  • Our promises to pay.
  • How troublesome is day!
  • Man yields to death; and man’s sublimest works
  • Must yield at length to Time.
  • The present is our own; but while we speak,
  • We cease from its possession, and resign
  • The stage we tread on, to another race,
  • As vain, and gay, and mortal as ourselves.
  • Time is lord of thee:
  • Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
  • To chase the clouds of life’s tempestuous hours,
  • To strew its short but weary way with flow’rs,
  • New hopes to raise, new feelings to impart,
  • And pour celestial balsam on the heart;
  • For this to man was lovely woman giv’n,
  • The last, best work, the noblest gift of Heav’n.