Great Throughts Treasury

"Never seek to tell thy love love that never told can be; for the gentle wind does move silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; trembling, cold, in ghastly fears ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me a traveler came by silently, invisibly- he took her with a sigh."

"None but blockheads copy each other."

"Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose public records to be true."

"O Earth O Earth return! Arise from out the dewy grass; 'night is worn, 'and the morn 'rises from the slumberous mass... Earth rais'd up her head, From the darkness dread and drear ...her locks cover'd with grey despair."

"O life of this our spring! Why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile and fall?"

"O God, protect me from my friends, that they have not power over me. Thou hast giv'n me power to protect myself from thy bitterest enemies."

"O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, that flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy."

"O the cunning wiles that creep in thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, then the dreadful night shall break."

"O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat that flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, oft pitchest here thy golden tent, and oft beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld with joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair."

"O thou, with dewy locks, who lookest down through the clear windows of the morning; turn thine angel eyes upon our western isle, which in full choir hails thy approach, o spring!"

"O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: the north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car."

"O! Why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like the rest of my race?"

"Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time!"

"Oh! Why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like the rest of my race? When I look,each one starts! When I speak, I offend; then I’m silent and passive and lose every friend. Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; all my talents I bury, and dead is my fame. I’m either too low or too highly prized; when elate I’m envy'd, when meek I’m despis'd."

"Oh, was no deny."

"On a cloud I saw a child, and he laughing said to me, pipe a song about a lamb; so I piped with merry cheer. Piper pipe that song again— so I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe sing thy songs of happy cheer; so I sung the same again while he wept with joy to hear."

"On no other ground Can I sow my seed Without tearing up Some stinking weed."

"One law for the lion and ox is oppression"

"Opposition is true friendship."

"Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb." So I piped with merry cheer; "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear."

"Pity would be no more if we did not make somebody poor; and mercy no more could be if all were as happy as we."

"Plants fruits of life and beauty there."

"Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!"

"Praises reap not! Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!"

"Prepare your hearts for death's cold hand! Prepare your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth; prepare your arms for glorious victory; prepare your eyes to meet a holy God! Prepare, prepare!"

"Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity."

"Puts all heaven in a rage."

"Return their thankfulness… for mercy has a human heart, pity, a human face, and love, the human form divine, and peace, the human dress."

"Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more."

"Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air; hungry clouds swag on the deep."

"Rouze up, o young men of the new age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the camp, the court and the university, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental and prolong corporeal war."

"See the world in a grain of sand ... And eternity in an hour."

"See what it is to play unfair! Where cheating is, there's mischief there."

"Seek love in the pity of others' woe, in the gentle relief of another's care, in the darkness of night and the winter's snow, in the naked and outcast, seek love there!"

"Shame is pride's cloak."

"She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous root of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:"

"Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; trembling, cold, in ghastly fears— ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me a traveler came by silently, invisibly—"

"Since the French revolution Englishmen are all inter-measurable one by another, certainly a happy state of agreement to which I for one do not agree."

"Sing louder around to the bells' cheerful sound, while our sports shall be seen on the echoing green."

"Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night."

"Some say that happiness is not good for mortals and they ought to be answered that sorrow is not fit for immortals and is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree and if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight."

"Some will say, is not God alone the prolific? I answer, God only acts and is, in existing beings or men."

"Sound the flute! Now it's mute. Birds delight day and night."

"Struggling in my father's hands, striving against my swaddling bands, bound and weary, I thought best to sulk upon my mother's breast."

"Such, such were the joys when we all, girls and boys, in our youth time were seen on the echoing green."

"Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up."

"Sweet babe, in thy face soft desires I can trace, secret joys and secret smiles, little pretty infant wiles."

"Sweet sleep, with soft down weave thy brows an infant crown! Sweet sleep, angel mild, hover o'er my happy child."

"Take thy Bliss, O Man!"

"Terror in the house does roar, but pity stands before the door."