Multiple

“ Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.
Captains, give the sailor place!
He is Admiral, in brief.
Still the north wind, by God's grace!
See the noble fellow's face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
See, safe through shoal and rock,
How they follow in a flock,
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
Not a spar that comes to grief! ”

“ I shall win if I can; if I cannot, I will cultivate my garden. I do not care for the leadership of a party which shall prove itself so fickle and so careless of national interests as to sacrifice the unity of the Empire to the precipitate impatience of an old man, careless of the future in which he can have no part, and to an uninstructed instinct which will not take the trouble to exercise judgement and criticism.’ In a subsequent letter (6 May) Chamberlain made an illuminating admission: ‘I do not really expect the government to give way, and, indeed, I do not wish it. ”

“ And, groping blindly above it for light,
⁠Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
⁠Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
⁠The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
⁠To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
⁠Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
⁠With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ”

“ Ledwidge has been called the Burns and the Clare of the Irish, but he was not distinctively Irish in genius. Though his inspiration was drawn from the fields along the Boyne, its themes are common to rural poets through northern Europe—may-blossoms, roses of the lane, roadside birds upon the tops of dusty hedges, and especially the blackbird's song. His joy is purely sensuous; and his sorrow is at root the pagan grief that all things pass. ”

“ The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought—
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought—
Come in her crowning hour—and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men ”

“ In spite of what he achieved Cust was remarkable rather for what he was than for what he did. It was in society that he won his greatest triumphs. He was, before all things, a talker, born and trained, and few of his contemporaries added more than he did to the stock of harmless pleasures. An assiduous traveller from his youth upwards, he knew both men and cities, and he spoke fully and amply, not only from the books which he had read and remembered, but from his own gay and vivid experience of life. ”

“ In the ordinary sense of the word Welby was not a good man of business. He loved a litter; his table was a byword. He was dilatory, inclined to potter over details, slow in coming to the point, and apt to delay a decision. But his industry was immense, and his proficiency in all the mysteries and minutiae of public finance unrivalled. His gift for estimates and for gauging the probable yield of taxes, new or old, was almost uncanny. He believed in a strong Treasury as a necessary check upon the growth of public expenditure and bureaucracy. ”

“ Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,
'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! ”

“ Kennedy's judgments were the fruit of great experience and learning, of an intellect which, though acute, was never the victim of its own subtlety, and of a complete mastery of lucid expression. His self-effacing nature kept him free from any trace of intellectual vanity or legal pedantry. His care and patience in weighing the merits of the weakest case were as unvarying as his courtesy and kindness to practitioners, especially to the less experienced among them, and he was regarded with affection as well as admiration by a wide circle of colleagues and friends. ”

“ But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake—
Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid—
Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
"The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows.
The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!"
The West Wind called:—"In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. ”

“ Sensitive and shy, Thomas guarded himself from the world by a fine, dry irony, which slightly veiled the poet both austere and ardent in his passion for beauty and the homely things of earth. His lofty, melancholy spirit burned in an eye fastidiously grave. ”

“ The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again."
The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
⁠"With my sledge,
⁠And my wedge,
⁠I have knocked off her edge!
If only I blow right fierce and grim,
The creature will soon be dimmer than dim."
He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread
⁠"One puff
⁠More's enough
⁠To blow her to snuff!
One good puff more where the last was bred,
And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread." ”

“ The question why, with his undoubted ability, Woodgate did not go further, may perhaps be answered in his own words: ‘I am who and what I am, and my best and truest friends (of both worlds) have been just who and what they are and beyond price. If one shift of the helm had steered my bark into some other channel wherein I should have failed to know and revere any single one of those elect, I should feel myself the poorer, even if that course had led me to a coronet.’ Woodgate fashioned his life, as he chose his clothes, for his own use and satisfaction, and was careless of the world's ways. ”

“ Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!"
⁠For pleasant is this flesh,
⁠Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pull'd ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
⁠Would we some prize might hold
⁠To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
⁠Let us not always say,
⁠"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gain'd ground upon the whole!"
⁠As the bird wings and sings,
⁠Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" ”

“ To a wide and ever increasing circle he became a figure uniquely impressive for the weight, the authority, the luxuriant elaboration of his mind, and lovable to the same degree for his ripe humour, his loyalty, his inexhaustible kindness—as also for something more, for a strain of odd and unexpected simplicity, that survived in him after a lifetime of ironic observation and experience. ”

“ The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire ”

“ With a narrow and almost cunning mind, a turbulent and autocratic heart, something great yet childlike in the man’s nature was for ever at war with the universe, demanding mercy for mankind and peace for himself. ”

“ And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. ”

“ Never was character better expressed by outward appearance than in Edmond Warre. A big frame, great-limbed but just a little clumsy, and handsome features, full of dignity and kindliness, bespoke the man. He combined a very humble simplicity and a tender heart with true religion and remarkable energy. But his commanding nature made him sometimes inconsiderate of weaker vessels, and his megalopsychia might seem self-centred. Had he retired when his health first failed he would have been remembered as the greatest of Eton head masters. In the long period of decline men forgot the pristine Warre. ”

“ And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die—does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:
"We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives. ”

“ Parry's vivid interest in many things outside music, his love of the open air and the sea (he was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and sailing his own yacht was easily first among his favourite recreations) , his sympathy with young people, his constant desire to explore new ways of thought, even those ways in modern music which were most antipathetic to him—all contributed to keep his nature sane and sweet. He could be intolerant, hasty, and even forbidding. He never ‘suffered fools gladly’, but only fools failed to get at the essential simplicity and truth of the man. ”

“ George Macdonald's charming book, "At the Back of the North Wind," also was my wonder and delight.
Little White Lily
Sat by a stone,
Drooping and waiting
Till the sun shone.
Little White Lily
Sunshine has fed;
Little White Lily
Is lifting her head.
Little White Lily
Said: "It is good
Little White Lily's
Clothing and food."
Little White Lily
Dressed like a bride!
Shining with whiteness,
And crownèd beside.
Little White Lily
Drooping with pain,
Waiting and waiting
For the wet rain.
Little White Lily
Holdeth her cup;
Rain is fast falling
And filling it up. ”

“ They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. ”

“ The bee awak'd—with anger wild
The bee awak'd, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
"Oh, Mother! I am wounded through—
I die with pain—in sooth I do! ”

“ Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmèd sunset lingered low adown
In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. ”