Poetry quotes

Thy burning heart doth draw thee up Unto the source of fire; Thou drinkest from its glowing cup, And quenchest thy desire.

Oh dew, thou droppest soft below, And pearlest all the ground,

Yet when the noontide comes, I know Thou never canst be found;

I would like thine had been my birth, Then I, without a sigh, Might sleep my night through on the earth, To waken in the sky.

Oh clouds, ye little tender sheep, Pastured in fields of blue,

While moon and stars your fold can keep, And gently shepherd you—

“So sit I dreary, desolate, Till the slow-moving hand of Fate Shall lift me from my sunken state.”

Her great lips closed upon her moan; Silently sate she on her throne, Rigid and black, as carved in stone.

With patient hand Jesus in clay once wrought, And made a snowy dove that upward flew: Dear child, from all things draw some holy thought, That like his dove they may fly upward too.

The morning-glory’s blossoming will soon be coming round, We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves upspringing from the ground, The tender things the winter killed, renew again their birth,

But the glory of our morning has passed away from earth.

In vain, O Earth! our aching eyes stretch over thy green plain, Too harsh thy dews, too cold thine air, her spirit to detain; But in the groves of Paradise, full surely we shall see Our morning-glory beautiful twine round our dear Lord’s knee.

Her new-born child she holdeth, but feels within her heart It is not hers, but his who can out-bid her in the mart; And through the gloomy midnight her prayer goes up on high,

“God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”

“If she must live to womanhood, oh may she never know, Uncheered by mother’s happiness, the mother’s depth of woe! And may I lie within my grave before that day I see, When she sits, as I am sitting, with a slave-child on her knee!”

The sun had set, the city gates were passed, Up swelled the mighty dome;

The dream of childhood had come true at last, We were in Rome!

The fountains trembled in their light and shade, The pale new moon was dropping down the sky, The pillars of the stately colonnade Seemed to be marching by.

The fountains trembled in their light and shade, The pale new moon was dropping down the sky,

The pillars of the stately colonnade Seemed to be marching by.

And Rome lay all before us in its glory, Its glory and its beautiful decay, But, like the student in the oft-read story, I could have turned away,

A white dove trembled up the heated air, And in the opening zenith found its goal;

Soft as a downward feather, dropped a prayer For each repentant soul.

A spirit is treading the earth, As wind treads the vibrating string; I know thy feet so beautiful, Thy punctual feet, O Spring!

They slide from far-off mountains, As slides the untouched snow; They move over deepening meadows, As vague cloud-shadows blow.

Thou wilt not enter the chamber, The door stands open in vain;

Thou art pluming the wands of cherry To lattice the window pane.

The graceful play, a moment stopped, Distance again unrolls,

Like silver balls, that, softly dropped, Ring into golden bowls.

I question of the poppies red, The fairy flaunting band, While I a weed, with drooping head, Within their phalanx stand.

When drops with welcome rain the April day, My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes; But there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay, As loath to fall out of those happy skies;

And sure, my love, thou art most like to May, That comes, with steady sun, when April dies.

In the deep flushing of the Western sky, The new moon stands as she would fain be gone, And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion:

In the deep flushing of the Western sky, The new moon stands as she would fain be gone,

And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion:

If Death uplift me, even thus should I, Companioned by the silver spirits high And stationed on the sunset’s crimson towers, Bend longing over earth’s broad stretch of bowers, To where my love beneath their shades might lie;