Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Meeting
As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.
Wm. R. Alger—Oriental Poetry. The Brief Chance Encounter.
Like a plank of driftwood
Tossed on the watery main,
Another plank encountered,
Meets, touches, parts again;
So tossed, and drifting ever,
On life’s unresting sea,
Men meet, and greet, and sever,
Parting eternally.
Edwin Arnold—Book of Good Counsel. Trans. from the Sanscrit of the Hitopadéesa. A literal trans. by Max Müller appeared in The Fortnightly, July, 1898. He also translated the same idea from the Mahavastu.
Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
Matthew Arnold—Terrace at Berne.
As drifting logs of wood may haply meet
On ocean’s waters surging to and fro,
And having met, drift once again apart,
So, fleeting is the intercourse of men.
E’en as a traveler meeting with the shade
Of some o’erhung tree, awhile reposes,
Then leaves its shelter to pursue his ways,
So men meet friends, then part with them for ever.
Trans. of the Code of Manu. In Words of Wisdom.
We met—’twas in a crowd.
Thomas Haynes Bayly—We Met.
Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide
When, moment on moment, there rashes between
The one and the other, a sea;—
Ah, never can fall from the days that have been
A gleam on the years that shall be!
Bulwer-Lytton—A Lament. L. 10.
As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadths of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch in the dark.
Holmes—Professor at the Breakfast Table.
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.
Longfellow—Morituri Salutamus. L. 113.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness:
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Longfellow—Tales of a Wayside Inn. The Theologian’s Tale. Elizabeth. Pt. IV.
In life there are meetings which seem
Like a fate.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto III. St. 8.
And soon, too soon, we part with pain,
To sail o’er silent seas again.
Thomas Moore—Meeting of the Ships.
Some day, some day of days, threading the street
With idle, heedless pace,
Unlooking for such grace,
I shall behold your face!
Some day, some day of days, thus may we meet.
Nora Perry—Some Day of Days.
And so he’ll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him.
King John. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 86.
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 1.
We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who behold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! and then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more.
Alexander Smith—Life Drama. Sc. IV.
Alas, by what rude fate
Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet,
Then part forever on their courses fleet.
E. C. Stedman—Blameless Prince. St. 51.
We shall meet but we shall miss her.
H. S. Washburn—Song.