Great Throughts Treasury

"I was betrothed that day; I wore a troth kiss on my lips I could not give away."

"I worked with patience which means almost power."

"I would build a cloudy House for my thoughts to live in; when for earth too fancy-loose and too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, to which I looked with thee."

"I would not be a rose upon the wall a queen might stop at, near the palace-door, to say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me, it's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh! I'd rather far be trodden by his foot, than lie in a great queen's bosom."

"If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange and be all to me?"

"If I married him, I would not dare to call my soul my own, which so he had bought and paid for: every thought and every heart-beat down there in the bill,– not one found honestly deductible"

"If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love's sake only. Do not say I love her for her smile —her look —her way of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought that falls in well with mine, and certes brought a sense of pleasant ease on such a day - For these things in themselves, Beloved, may be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, may be unwrought so. Neither love me for thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,— a creature might forget to weep, who bore thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity."

"If you desire faith, then you have faith enough."

"In our age faith and charity are found, but they are found apart. We tolerate everybody, because we doubt everything; or else we tolerate nobody, because we believe something."

"In the pleasant orchard closes, `God bless all our gains', say we; but `May God bless all our losses' better suits with our degree."

"In this abundant earth no doubt is little room for things worn out: disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough we once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I."

"In this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world, where all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost."

"Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot my soul's full meaning into future years, that they should lend it utterance, and salute love that endures, from life that disappears!"

"Into our deep, dear silence."

"It is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist's work ever produced."

"It is not merely the likeness which is precious ... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing ... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced."

"Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat."

"Knowledge by suffering entereth, and life is perfected by Death."

"Large, musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry."

"Let no one 'til his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work Until the day's out, and the labor done: Then bring your gauges."

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go."

"Life treads on life, and heart on heart: We press too close in church and mart, To keep a dream or grave apart"

"Life, struck sharp on death, makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–' 'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief) 'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone, and none was left to love in all the world."

"Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first."

"Love doesn't make the world go round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

"Love me sweet with all thou art feeling, thinking, seeing; love me in the Lightest part, love me in full Being."

"Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends the two-fold manner, in and outwardly, and nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself, — cup, column, or candlestick, all patterns of what shall be in the Mount; the whole temporal show related royally, and build up to eterne significance through the open arms of God."

"Many a crown covers bald foreheads."

"Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones."

"Measure not the work until the day's out and the labour done, then bring your gauges."

"Men could not part us with their worldly jars, nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,-- and, heaven being rolled between us at the end, we should but vow the faster for the stars."

"Mountain gorses, do ye teach us . . . that the wisest word man reaches is the humblest he can speak?"

"Mountain gorses, ever-golden. Cankered not the whole year long! Do ye teach us to be strong, howsoever pricked and holden like your thorny blooms and so trodden on by rain and snow, up the hillside of this life, as bleak as where ye grow?"

"My heart is very tired--my strength is low-- My hands are full of blossoms pluck'd before held dead within them till myself shall die."

"My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering against my tremulous hands which loose the string and let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring to come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this... the paper's light... said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed as if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled with lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed if, what this said, I dared repeat at last!"

"My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument."

"My sun sets to raise again."

"Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken."

"Nay, if there's room for poets in the world a little overgrown, (I think there is) their sole work is to represent the age, their age, not Charlemagne's, — this live, throbbing age, that brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, and spends more passion, more heroic heat, betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles."

"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books."

"Nor myrtle--which means chiefly love: and love is something awful which one dare not touch so early o' mornings."

"Nosegays! leave them for the waking, throw them earthward where they grew dim are such, beside the breaking amaranths he looks unto. Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do."

"O brave poets, keep back nothing; nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, truest Truth the fairest Beauty."

"O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange!"

"O Earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the wader's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, and "giveth His beloved, sleep.""

"O Life, how oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough, enough of life in so much! — here's a cause for rupture; — herein we must break with Life, or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!' — And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes and think all ended. — Then, Life calls to us in some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, above us, or below us, or around. Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's, tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed to own our compensations than our griefs: still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life."

"O rose, who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet, but pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,-- kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee."

"O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, the holy name of Grief--holy herein, that, by the grief of One, came all our good."

"Of all the thoughts of God that are borne inward unto souls afar, along the Psalmist's music deep, now tell me if that any is. For gift or grace, surpassing this-- "He giveth His beloved sleep.""

"Of writing many books there is no end; and I who have written much in prose and verse for others' uses, will write now for mine,— will write my story for my better self, as when you paint your portrait for a friend, who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it long after he has ceased to love you, just to hold together what he was and is."