Great Throughts Treasury

"What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?"

"What thought is folded in thy leaves! What tender thought, what speechless pain! I hold thy faded lips to mine, thou darling of the April rain."

"When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host."

"When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit, what life, what glorious eagerness it is, then mark how full Possession falls from this, how fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,--I am perplext, and often stricken mute. Wondering which attained the higher bliss, the wing'd insect, or the chrysalis it thrust aside with unreluctant foot."

"When the Sultan Shah-Zaman goes to the city Ispahan, even before he gets so far as the place where the clustered palm-trees are, at the last of the thirty palace-gates the pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, orders a feast in his favorite room--glittering square of colored ice, sweetened with syrup, tinctured with spice, creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, limes and citrons and apricots, and wines that are known to Eastern princes."

"When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away, and in a dream as in a fairy bark drift on and on through the enchanted dark to purple daybreak--little thought we pay to that sweet bitter world we know by day."

"Whenever a new scholar came to our school, I used to confront him at recess with the following words: 'My name's Tom Bailey: what's your name?' If the name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but if it didn't I would turn on my heel, for I was particular in this point. Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly affronts to my ear; while Langdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passing words to my confidence and esteem."

"Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, named of the four winds, North, South, East and West; portals that lead to an enchanted land? Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage and Honor honor, and the humblest man stand level with the highest in the law. Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed and with the vision brightening in their eyes gone smiling to the fagot and the sword. O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow?s children, soothe the hurts of Fate, lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel stay those who to thy sacred portals come to waste the gifts of Freedom."