Great Throughts Treasury

"The thirst to know and understand, a large and liberal discontent; these are the goods in life's rich hand, the things that are more excellent."

"Last night the seawind was to me a metaphor of liberty, and every wave along the beach a starlit music seemed to be. To-day the seawind is to me a fettered soul that would be free, and dumbly striving after speech the tides yearn landward painfully. To-morrow how shall sound for me the changing voice of wind and sea? What tidings shall be borne of each? What rumour of what mystery?"

"Here, peradventure, in this mirror glassed, who gazes long and well at times beholds some sunken feature of the mummied past, but oftener only the embroidered folds and soiled magnificence of her rent robe whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties that sweep the dust of ‘ons in our eyes and with their trailing pride cumber the globe.- for lo! The high, imperial past is dead: the air is full of its dissolvŠd bones; invincible armies long since vanquishŠd, kings that remember not their awful thrones, powerless potentates and foolish sages, impede the slow steps of the pompous ages."

"Thou burden of all songs the earth hath sung, Thou retrospect in Time's reverted eyes, Thou metaphor of everything that dies, that dies ill-starred, or dies beloved and young and therefore blest and wise,- O be less beautiful, or be less brief, Thou tragic splendour, strange, and full of fear! In vain her pageant shall the Summer rear? At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, crumbles the gorgeous year. Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the tale of Summer's bloom, the legend of the Spring! And thou, too, flutterest an impatient wing, Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail, Thou most unbodied thing, whose very being is thy going hence, and passage and departure all thy theme; whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, and thou at height of thy magnificence a figment and a dream. Stilled is the virgin rapture that was June, and cold is August's panting heart of fire; and in the storm-dismantled forest-choir for thine own elegy thy winds attune their wild and wizard lyre: and poignant grows the charm of thy decay, the pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey with speech fantastic ring. For me, to dreams resigned, there come and go, 'twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, elusive notes in wandering wafture borne, from undiscoverable lips that blow an immaterial horn; and spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet- Past and Future in sad bridal met, O voice of everything that perishes, and soul of all regret!"

"The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: the ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er Winter's world comes flitting. Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray, Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry? Or but some bold outrider of the May, Some April-emissary? The apparition faded on the air, Capricious and incalculable comer.-- Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare, And fall'n my phantom Summer?"

"Laugh thy girlish laughter; then, the moment after, weep thy girlish tears! April, that mine ears like a lover greetest, if I tell thee, sweetest, all my hopes and fears, April, April, laugh thy golden laughter, but, the moment after, weep thy golden tears!"