| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | R. W. Gilder |
| | | | From all the misty morning air, there comes a summer sound, |
| A murmur as of waters from skies, and trees, and ground. |
| The birds they sing upon the wing, the pigeons bill and coo. |
| 1 |
| | I am a woman—therefore I may not |
| Call to him, cry to him, |
| Fly to him, |
| Bid him delay not! |
| 2 |
| | In the embers shining bright |
| A garden grows for thy delight, |
| With roses yellow, red, and white. |
| |
| But, O my child, beware, beware! |
| Touch not the roses growing there, |
| For every rose a thorn doth bear. |
| 3 |
| | None who e’er knew her can believe her dead; |
| Though, should she die, they deem it well might be |
| Her spirit took its everlasting flight |
| In summer’s glory, by the sunset sea, |
| That onward through the Golden Gate is fled. |
| Ah, where that bright soul is cannot be night. |
| 4 |
| | Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme, |
| Have not we sworn it, many a time, |
| That we no more our verse would scrawl, |
| For Shakespeare he had said it all! |
| 5 |
| | Oh, father’s gone to market-town, he was up before the day, |
| And Jamie’s after robins, and the man is making hay, |
| And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill, |
| While mother from the kitchen door is calling with a will, |
| “Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the corn! Oh, where’s Polly?” |
| 6 |
| | The smile of her I love is like the dawn |
| Whose touch makes Memnon sing: |
| O see where wide the golden sunlight flows— |
| The barren desert blossoms as the rose! |
| 7 |
| | What babe new born is this that in a manger cries? |
| Near on her lowly bed his happy mother lies. |
| Oh, see the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings— |
| This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of Kings. |
| 8 |
| | What is a Sonnet? ’Tis the pearly shell |
| That murmurs of the far-off, murmuring sea; |
| A precious jewel carved most curiously; |
| It is a little picture painted well. |
| What is a Sonnet? ’Tis the tear that fell |
| From a great poet’s hidden ecstacy; |
| A two-edged sword, a star, a song—ah me! |
| Sometimes a heavy tolling funeral bell. |
| 9 |
| | Ye living soldiers of the mighty war, |
| Once more from roaring cannon and the drums |
| And bugles blown at morn, the summons comes; |
| Forget the halting limb, each wound and scar: |
| Once more your Captain calls to you; |
| Come to his last review! |
| 10 | | |
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