James Thomson

“ The watchwords and symbols change from generation to generation, the supreme secrets are immutable from the beginning to the end of Time. Exactly what they cherish and adore as the inmost mystery of their being, their whole being ever strives to utter most clearly abroad to the senses and hearts and intellects of the whole world; thus the mystery still inviolate must for ever be inviolable, for there can be no new or better means of expression and interpretation: only the initiated ever truly hear and read it, to all others it is sound without meaning and letters without significance. ”

“ The points of contact and sides of likeness between William Blake and Walt Whitman are so many and so grave as to afford some ground of reason to those who preach the transition of souls or transfusion of spirits. The great American is not a more passionate preacher of sexual or political freedom than the English artist. To each the imperishable form of a possible and universal Republic is equally requisite and adorable as the temporal and spiritual queen of ages as of men. To each all sides and shapes of life are alike acceptable or endurable. ”

“ The City rests for man so weird and awful, That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, 20 And phantoms there may have their proper home. VIII While I still lingered on that river-walk, And watched the tide as black as our black doom, I heard another couple join in talk, And saw them to the left hand in the gloom Seated against an elm bole on the ground, 5 Their eyes intent upon the stream profound. "I never knew another man on earth But had some joy and solace in his life, Some chance of triumph in the dreadful strife: My doom has been unmitigated dearth." ”

“ Thro' the thick air; as cloath'd in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon descending, to the long dark night,⁠50
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.
Nor is the night unwish'd; while vital heat,
Light, life, and joy, the dubious day forsake.
Mean-time, in fable cincture, shadows vast,
Deep-ting'd and damp, and congregated clouds,⁠55
And all the vapoury turbulence of heaven
Involve the face of things. ”

“ And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm ! Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines ! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy Art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For a good poet's made, as well as born. ”

“ Then is the time,
For those whom wisdom and whom Nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate croud,
And soar above this little scene of things; ⁠955
To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet;
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace;
And woe lone Quiet in her silent walks.
⁠Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,
Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead; ⁠960
And thro' the saddened grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain, to chear the woodman's toil.
Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint,
Far, in faint warblings, thro' the tawny copse. ”

“ But I fear that the universe can do without me, as me, though my being is part of its being. When I die, Nature seizes on my effects, administers my estate, duly distributing the property. I who am dead as this Sigvat still continue my interest in the general life by every particle of my being thus distributed, and by the enduring existence of all that I have ever rayed forth—from attraction of gravity, attraction and repulsion electrical, to thought and emotion of humanity. Nothing is lost, though the walls of the Ego have given way and let in the floods of the universe. ”

“ Try to fancy being an old-maid or grass-widow for ever and ever where all the men are very much married, having six dozen wives each at the very lowest! Such a heaven to a good woman were ten times crueller than hell. When the Muslim women have been aroused to a sense of their rights, they will insist on being treated in the next world on equal terms with the men: the meanest woman of the faithful (supposing any woman can be mean) shall have her eighty thousand beautiful servants, and her seventy-two husbands of the youths of Paradise, resplendent, adoring, ever obedient. ”

“ There is no God; no Fiend with names divine 40 Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall. It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme, Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; 45 Whom we must curse because the life he gave Could not be buried in the quiet grave, Could not be killed by poison or the knife. This little life is all we must endure, The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, 50 We fall asleep and never wake again ”

“ Even where the madness of the straiten'd stream 815
Turns in black eddies round: such is the force
With which his frantic heart and sinews swell.
Nor undelighted, by the boundless spring,
Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep:
From the deep ooze, and gelid cavern rous'd,820
They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy.
Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing
The cruel raptures of the savage kind:
How by this flame their native wrath sublim'd,
They roam, amid the fury of their heart, 825
The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands,
And growl their horrid loves. ”

“ He devoted himself heart and mind to the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature; an intrinsic perfectibility to eventuate in a heaven on earth realised by the noble endeavours of man himself; not that which is complacently patronised by many so-called Christians, who are agreed to die and accept a perfect nature as a free gift, when they can no longer live imperfect. As if the severe laws of the universe permitted partial gifts, any more than they permit gainful robberies! Though I must consider Shelley mistaken in this belief, I yet honour and not blame him for it. ”

“ By antient learning to th' enlightened love ⁠1525
Of antient freedom warm'd. Fair thy renown
In awful Sages and in noble Bards;
Soon as the light of dawning Science spread
Her orient ray, and wak'd the Muses' song.
Thine is a Bacon, hapless in his choice, ⁠1530
Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,
And thro' the smooth barbarity of courts,
With firm but pliant virtue, forward still
To urge his course. Him for the studious shade
Kind Nature form'd, deep, comprehensive, clear, ⁠1535
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,
Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully join'd. ”

“ All Winter drives along the darkened air;
In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, ⁠280
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain:
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray:
Impatient flouncing thro' the drifted heaps, ⁠285
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! ”

“ In fair array; each by the lass he loves,
To bear the rougher part, and mitigate ⁠155
By nameless gentle offices her toil.
At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves;
While thro' their chearful band the rural talk
The rural scandal, and the rural jest
Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time, ⁠160
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.
Behind the master walks, builds up the shocks;
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His fated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there, ⁠165
Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick. ”

“ BEN JONSON 147 "It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be ; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear : A lily of a day, Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night ; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see ; And in short measures life may perfect be." ”

“ There is the Open Secret Society of the Poets. These are they who feel that the universe is one mighty harmony of beauty and joy; and who are continually listening to the rhythms and cadences of this eternal music whose orchestra comprises all things from the shells to the stars, all beings from the worm to man, all sounds from the voice of the little bird to the voice of the great ocean; and who are able partially to reproduce these rhythms and cadences in the language of men. ”

“ Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
The Bittern knows his time, with bill engulft
To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The Plover theirs, to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
Th' expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold,
But full of life, and vivifying soul,
Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them thin,
Fleecy, and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven. ”

“ But as if blacker night could dawn on night, With tenfold gloom on moonless night unstarred, A sense more tragic than defeat and blight, More desperate than strife with hope debarred, 60 More fatal than the adamantine Never Encompassing her passionate endeavour, Dawns glooming in her tenebrous regard: To sense that every struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; 65 That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain ”

“ That beam for ever thro' the boundless sky:
But, should he hide his face, th' astonish'd sun,
And all th' extinguish'd stars, would loosening start
Wide from their spheres, and Chaos come again.
⁠And yet was every faultering tongue of Man, ⁠185
Almighty Maker! silent in thy praise;
Thy works themselves would raise a general voice,
Even in the depth of solitary woods,
By human foot untrod, proclaim thy power,
And to the quire celestial Thee resound, ⁠190
Th' eternal cause, support and end of all!
⁠To me be Nature's volume broad-display'd ”

“ With gentle throws; and, thro' the tepid gleams
Deep-musing, then he best exerts his song. ⁠1315
Even Winter wild to him is full of bliss.
The mighty tempest, and the hoary waste,
Abrupt, and deep, stretch'd o'er the buried earth,
Awake to solemn thought. At night the skies,
Disclos'd, and kindled, by refining frost, ⁠1320
Pour every lustre on th' exalted eye.
A friend, a book the stealing hours secure,
And mark them down for wisdom. With swift wing,
O'er land and sea imagination roams;
Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, ⁠1325
Elates his being, and unfolds his powers ”

“ In the purity of our fervent youth I think we all consecrate ourselves to an early death; but the gods cannot love us all with a partial love, and most of us must dwindle down through age and decrepitude into the grave. But Shelley, while singing of the Millennial Future, and chanting the beatitudes of our free and pure and love-united posterity, knew with undeceiving prescience that he could not live to see even the first straight steps taken towards the glorious goal. ”

“ Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks ⁠305
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Thro' the wrung bosom of the dying Man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. ”

“ With soul to thine attun'd. Then Nature all
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love; 935
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Tost by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme, 940
You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptur'd, drink
That nameless spirit of etherial joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love, 945
Alone bellows, and on a favour'd few. ”