| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Robert Browning |
| | | | A pretty woman’s worth some pains to see, |
| Nor is she spoiled, I take it, if a crown |
| Completes the forehead pale and tresses pure. |
| 1 |
| | All June I bound the rose in sheaves, |
| Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves. |
| 2 |
| | All service is the same with God— |
| With God, whose puppets, best and worst, |
| Are we: there is no last nor first. |
| 3 |
| | All will be gay when noontide wakes anew |
| The buttercups, the little children’s dower. |
| 4 |
| | Autumn wins you best by this, its mute |
| Appeal to sympathy for its decay. |
| 5 |
| | Better have failed in the high aim, as I, |
| Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed |
| As, God be thanked! I do not. |
| 6 |
| | Day! |
| Faster and more fast, |
| O’er night’s brim, day boils at last; |
| Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim |
| Where spurting and suppress’d it lay— |
| For not a froth-flake touched the rim |
| Of yonder gap in the solid gray |
| Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; |
| But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, |
| Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest, |
| Rose, reddened, and its seething breast |
| Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world. |
| 7 |
| | Dear, dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold |
| Used to hang and brush their bosoms? |
| 8 |
| | Faster and more fast, |
| O’er night’s brim, day boils at last; |
| Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim. |
| 9 |
| | Finds progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, |
| Not God’s, and not the beast’s; |
| God is, they are, |
| Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. |
| 10 |
| | For thence,—a paradox |
| Which comforts while it mocks,— |
| Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: |
| What I aspired to be, |
| And was not, comforts me: |
| A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale. |
| 11 |
| | God is a perfect poet, |
| Who in His person acts His own creations. |
| 12 |
| | God smiles as He has always smiled; |
| Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, |
| Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled |
| The Heavens, God thought on me His child; |
| Ordained a life for me, arrayed |
| Its circumstances, every one |
| To the minutest; ay, God said |
| This head this hand should rest upon |
| Thus, ere He fashioned star or sun. |
| 13 |
| | God’s in His Heaven— |
| All’s right with the world! |
| 14 |
| | God’s justice, tardy though it prove perchance, |
| Rests never on the track until it reach |
| Delinquency. |
| 15 |
| | Good, to forgive; |
| Best to forget! |
| 16 |
| | Hand |
| Grasps hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, |
| And great hearts expand, |
| And grow one in the sense of this world’s life. |
| 17 |
| | Have you found your life distasteful? |
| My life did, and does, smack sweet. |
| Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? |
| Mine I saved and hold complete. |
| Do your joys with age diminish? |
| When mine fail me I’ll complain. |
| Must in death your daylight finish? |
| My sun sets to rise again. |
| 18 |
| | Her voice changed like a bird’s: |
| There grew more of the music and less of the words. |
| 19 |
| | I give the fight up; let there be an end, |
| A privacy, an obscure nook for me, |
| I want to be forgotten even by God. |
| 20 |
| |
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| |
| | I know a mount, the gracious Sun perceives |
| First when he visits, last, too, when he leaves |
| The world; and, vainly favored, it repays |
| The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze |
| By no change of its large calm front of snow. |
| 21 |
| | I send my heart up to thee, all my heart |
| In this my singing! |
| For the stars help me, and the sea bear part. |
| 22 |
| | I trust in Nature for the stable laws |
| Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant |
| And Autumn garner to the end of time. |
| I trust in God—the right shall be the right |
| And other than the wrong, while He endures; |
| I trust in my own soul, that can perceive |
| The outward and the inward, Natures good |
| And God’s. |
| 23 |
| | In some time, His good time, I shall arrive; |
| He guides me and the bird |
| In His good time. |
| 24 |
| | It’s wiser being good than bad; |
| It’s safer being meek than fierce: |
| It’s fitter being sane than mad. |
| My own hope is, a sun will pierce |
| The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; |
| That, after Last, returns the First, |
| Though a wide compass round be fetched; |
| That what began best, can’t end worst, |
| Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. |
| 25 |
| | Italy, my Italy! |
| Queen Mary’s saying serves for me— |
| (When fortune’s malice |
| Lost her Calais)— |
| Open my heart and you will see |
| Graved inside of it, “Italy.” |
| 26 |
| | Love, hope, fear, faith,—these make humanity; |
| These are its sign, and note, and character. |
| 27 |
| | ’Mid the sharp, short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, |
| The wild tulip at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell, |
| Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell. |
| 28 |
| | No thought which ever stirred |
| A human breast should be untold. |
| 29 |
| | Of what I call God, |
| And fools call Nature. |
| 30 |
| | Sorrow, the heart must bear, |
| Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there. |
| Many a circumstance, at least, |
| Touches the very breast. |
| For those |
| Whom any sent away,—he knows; |
| And in the live man’s stead, |
| Armor and ashes reach |
| The house of each. |
| 31 |
| | That low man seeks a little thing to do, |
| Sees it and does it; |
| This high man, with a great thing to pursue, |
| Dies ere he knows it. |
| 32 |
| | There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; |
| The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; |
| What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; |
| On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. |
| 33 |
| | Things are where things are, and, as fate has willed, |
| So shall they be fulfilled. |
| 34 |
| | Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven |
| What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven. |
| 35 |
| | ’Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do. |
| 36 |
| | To me at least was never evening yet |
| But seemed far beautifuller than its day. |
| 37 |
| | Wander at will, |
| Day after day,— |
| Wander away, |
| Wandering still— |
| Soul that canst soar! |
| Body may slumber: |
| Body shall cumber |
| Soul-flight no more. |
| 38 |
| | What’s come to perfection perishes, |
| Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven; |
| Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes. |
| 39 |
| | What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, |
| And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? |
| No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne’er forgets; |
| May learn a thousand things, not twice the same. |
| 40 |
| Be sure they sleep not whom God needs. | 41 |
| Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure. | 42 |
| Fair or foul the lot apportioned life on earth, we bear alike. | 43 |
| Progress is the law of life,—man is not man as yet. | 44 |
| So may a glory from defect arise. | 45 |
| Talent should minister to genius. | 46 |
| There are times when patience proves at fault. | 47 |
| Truth is truth howe’er it strike. | 48 | | |
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