Various

“ And all night long a passionate music stirs
Without her walls the guardian belt of firs;
Hushed in their waving boughs, the low winds brood,
Murm'ring the sea's song for an interlude.
Within the darkness does my lady wake,
To hear her nightingales their music make,
And musing, Weep and wonder at the pain
That breaks through all the rapture of their strain?
Does the dawn rouse her with its murmurous flight
Of swallows glancing grey against the light,
To dream again of all the joys that lie
Folded within the new day's mystery? ”

“ Every motion of the horses under them was like a throb of the heart of the earth, every bound like a sigh of her bliss. Florimel shouted almost like a boy with ecstasy, and Clementina's moonlight went very near changing into sunlight as she gazed and breathed and knew that she was alive.
They started without Malcolm, for he must always put his mistress up and then go back to the stable for Kelpie. In a moment they were in the wood, crossing its shadows. It was like swimming their horses through a sea of shadows. ”

“ Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
When Malcolm lifted his head the sun had gone down. He rose and wandered along the sand toward the moon, blooming at length out of the darkening sky, where she had hung all day like a washed-out rag of light, to revive as the sunlight faded. ”

“ When the vines were crushed 'neath the guardsmen's tread,
And the night over Alma fell.
Where is the smile that welcomed it with her gallant lover's vow,
And placed it amid the golden braids that crowned her fair young brow?
It is carved on the lips of marble
Of the statue that marks her rest,
As she lies alone in her maiden grave
In the great cathedral's solemn nave,
Where the organ's voice, like a rolling wave,
Flows over her virgin breast.
Leave the violet in the volume of the old romantic rhyme —
Pale symbol of love that has passed away, dry pledge of a sweet old time! ”

“ High up it can only show itself at intervals between smothering snow-beds which form continuous bridges. Even the thundering fall of the Handeck becomes a gentle thread of pure water creeping behind a broad sheet of ice, more delicately carved and moulded than a lady's veil, and so diminished in volume that one wonders how it has managed to festoon the broad rock faces with so vast a mass of pendent icicles. The pulse of the mountains is beating low; the huge arteries through which the life-blood courses so furiously in summer have become a world too wide for this trickle of pellucid water. ”

“ There you are between the sea and the sand-hills. The breeze is catching up the sand in drifting clouds, and swirling it about you in such flying columns as are the terror of the traveller in the Asian deserts. The leaden-coloured scud drifts across a lowering sky, and everything above and below would be the abomination of bleak desolation but for here and there a blue rift overhead that lets in a stream of sunshine, for the chimneys of the snug fishers' cottages that are smoking to landward, and the flotilla of dingy-sailed fishing-boats that lies rocking on the swell in the offing. ”

“ In the minutest crevices between the most rigid mechanism of life, poetry can grow as easily as the flower between the angles of a wall, or a swallow, destined to range the seas and migrate to the delights of an African winter, in the grim niches of a London chimney. The fears which periodically send a shiver through society lest the fountains of poetry be dried up, are only the hallucinations of men whose own imaginations are growing cold, and unable to enter into the vividness of the last breath that has stirred the hearts of men. ”

“ While butterflies around us flit,
⁠And brown bees come and go.
The lark sings high, in heaven above,
Its thrilling strain of happy love.
⁠While we sit still below;
Each heart can feel the other beat.
But neither breaks the silence sweet,
⁠With whispered "Yes" or "No."
Ah, me! since then what months of pain
Ah, me! what months of sun and rain
⁠Must run, ere I can see
Another of those sunshine hours,
And hear among the summer flowers
⁠How one remembers me.
But love is mine, how strong and true,
And hope springs green, dear flowers, as you. ”

“ He spent long whiles on the eminence, looking down the river-shed and abroad on the fat lowlands, and watched the clouds that travelled forth upon the sluggish wind and trailed their purple shadows on the plain; or he would linger by the wayside, and follow the carriages with his eyes as they rattled downward by the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that went that way, were it cloud or carriage, bird or brown water in the stream, he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing. ”

“ The spirit has its risings and settings of sun and moon, its clouds and stars, its seasons, its solstices, its tides, its winds, its storms, its earthquakes — infinite vitality in endless fluctuation. To rule these changes Florimel had neither the power that comes of love nor the strength that comes of obedience. What of conscience she had was not yet conscience toward God, which is the guide to freedom, but conscience toward society, which is the slave of a fool. It was no wonder then that Lenorme, believing, hoping, she loved him, should find her hard to understand. ”

“ Notwithstanding her fine health and natural spirits, Florimel had begun to know what it is to wake suddenly of a morning between three and four, and lie for a long, weary time sleepless. In youth, bodily fatigue ensures falling asleep, but as soon as the body is tolerably rested, if there be unrest in the mind, that wakes it, and consciousness returns in the shape of a dull misgiving, like the far echo of the approaching trump of the archangel. ”

“ There had been rain in the afternoon as Malcolm walked home from the Pool, but before the sun set it had cleared up, and as he went through the park toward the dingy suburb the first heralds of the returning youth of the year met him from all sides in the guise of odors — not yet those of flowers, but the more ethereal if less sweet scents of buds and grass and ever pure earth moistened with the waters of heaven. And, to his surprise, he found that his sojourn in a great city, although as yet so brief, had already made the open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful. ”

“ Lake and forest and mountain are lighted by the low sun, casting strange misty shadows to portentous heights, to fade in the vast depths of the sky, or to lose themselves imperceptibly on the mountain flanks. As the steamboat runs into the shadow of the hills, a group of pine-trees on the sky-line comes near the sun, and is suddenly transformed into molten silver; or some snow-ridge, pale as death on the nearest side, is lighted up along its summit with a series of points glowing with intense brilliancy, as though the peaks were being kindled by a stupendous burning-glass. ”

“ A nest, built up in the rustling boughs,
Lined soft with moss, so green,
A tiny dwelling — a woodland house,
With leaves for a sheltering screen.
Three delicate eggs, that pearl-like lie
Beneath two brooding wings,
A mate that hovers all watchful by,
Or sits beside, and sings.
A careless boy, with a pitiless heart,
That cares not for lovely things;
A bird, that rises with timid start,
On scared and fluttering wings. ”

“ One faint, far tone will waken, and will rise
⁠Above the great wave voice of mortal pain;
⁠Hand will touch hand and lips touch lips again,
As in the darkness it recedes and dies;
Or lingering in the summer evening glow,
⁠Then, when the passion of the crimson west
⁠Burning like some great heart that cannot rest,
Stains as with blood the waters as they flow,
Some old forgotten tones may rise and wake
⁠Our dying youth, and set our hearts aflame
⁠With their old sweetness, — to our lips the name
Of love steal softly for the old love's sake. ”

“ Far in advance of us the lights of a village gleamed like glow-worms lying in the grass, and overhead the immense vault was strewn with innumerable stars, like the bivouac fires of a grand army. The moonlight lay along the branches like threads of silver, and all the hills, all the ravines, were swimming in this magical reverberating light, which produces in us at the same time such calm and such melancholy. ”

“ The true life, the true bright sunshine, lay far out upon the plain. And oh! to see this sunlight once before he died! to move with a jocund spirit in a golden land! to hear the trained singers and sweet church bells, and see the holiday gardens! And O fish! he would cry, if you would only turn your noses down stream, you could swim so easily into the fabled waters and see the vast ships passing over your head like clouds, and hear the great water-hills making music over you all day long! ”

“ O the gladness of the children, after all the dismal days,
In the freedom and the beauty, and the heart-rejoicing rays!
Do we chill the gleeful spirits, check the pulses bounding fast,
By the mournful doubt suggested, "Ah but, darling! will it last?"
Though we know there may be tempests, and we know there will be showers,
Yet we know they only hasten summer's richer crown of flowers. ”

“ There are clouds and darkness around God's ways,
⁠And the noon of life grows hot;
And though His faithfulness standeth fast
As the mighty mountains, a shroud is cast
Over the glory, solemn and vast,
⁠Veiling, but changing it not.
Send a sweet breeze from Thy sea, O Lord,
⁠From thy deep, deep sea of love;
Though it lift not the veil from the cloudy height.
Let the brow grow cool and the footstep light. ”

“ When man at length his ideal height hath gained,
So that the heavenly kingdom is attained,
Will there be any room for tears and pain,
For dim grey twilights, sobbing wind, and rain,
Mist, wreaths, and flying clouds, the thunder's roar,
Or the sea breaking on a lonely shore,
With all the yearnings these things shadow forth?
Is the pathetic minor but for earth,
And will the heavens resound with joy alone,
Though sadness often makes a deeper tone?
Must all of life fall off that cannot show
Some fruit that did to full perfection grow? ”

“ Perhaps now, far from both Caley and Liftore, he might say something to open her eyes; yet how should he avoid the appearance of a tale-bearer?
It was a sweet fresh morning late in the spring — those loveliest of hours that unite the seasons, like the shimmering question of green or blue in the feathers of the peacock. He had set out an hour before the rest, and now, a little way within the park, was coaxing Kelpie to stand, that he might taste the morning in peace. The sun was but a few degrees above the horizon, shining with all his heart, and the earth was taking the shine with all hers. ”

“ The winter Alps provide some such curtain. The very daylight has an unreal glow. The noisy summer life is suspended. A scarce audible hush seems to be whispered throughout the region. The first glacier stream that you meet strikes the keynote of the prevailing melody. In summer the torrent comes down like a charge of cavalry — all rush and roar and foam" and fury — turbid with the dust ground from the mountain's flanks by the ice-share, and spluttering and writhing in its bed like a creature in the agonies of strangulation. ”

“ Jump out of the window, if you are not prepared for instant annihilation, but wait behind that juniper and peep through the heavy, dark branches that rob the window of half the rays of a watery autumn sun, and you may note the entrance of an old man with stooping shoulders and scanty grey hair, and watchful, light-blue eyes, which need the warming effect of a smile on the quaint, rugged, but not unkindly face. ”

“ In these modern days men have lost the pleasures of the orchard; yet an old-fashioned orchard is the most delicious of places wherein to idle away the afternoon of a hazy autumn day, when the sun seems to shine with a soft slumberous warmth without glare, as if the rays came through an aerial spider's web spun across the sky, letting all the beauty but not the heat slip through its invisible meshes. ”

“ Joy itself seemed embodied in the wind blowing on him out of the misty infinite while his boat rocked and swung on the waters, hanging between two worlds — that in which the wind blew, and that other dark-swaying mystery whereinto the nets to which it was tied went away down and down, gathering the harvest of the ocean. It was as if nature called up all her motherhood to greet and embrace her long-absent son. ”

“ No one who had not witnessed them could ever believe the heart-breaking scenes which met one at every turn — men reduced to perfect skeletons, eating grass like the beasts of the field, women sinking by the roadside, with starving babies at their breasts, young children, gaunt with famine, with faces like old men, their bones starting through their skin, vainly striving to keep up with their parents, and dropping by dozens on the way. ”

“ The Sunday-sealed door of the stationer's shop — for there was no private entrance to the house — was opened by another sad-faced woman. What a place to seek the secret of life in! Lovelily enfolds the husk its kernel; but what the human eye turns from as squalid and unclean may enfold the seed that clasps, couched in infinite withdrawment, the vital germ of all that is lovely and graceful, harmonious and strong, all without which no poet would sing, no martyr burn, no king rule in righteousness, no geometrician pore over the marvelous must. ”

“ Telling of high resolve, — of longings noble, free,
Of golden moments gone by unheedingly!
Of the changing hours that come and go, —
Of their ever ringing for joy or woe!
Ringing! ringing! ringing! still ring on,
⁠⁠⁠O old church bells!
With tender pathos to each living one.
⁠⁠⁠Your music tells
That beauty, wealth, and joy must fade and die,
That man must spend his days as for eternity,
Where the changing hours will cease to flow,
Where 'tis never ringing for joy or woe! ”

“ The garden, with its luxuriant old-fashioned flowers, and clipped box borders, and quaint sun-dial, has been a garden so long that the rich soil bears blossoms with twice the perfume of other flowers; and as we pace along the broad terraced walks in the twilight, the odours of the well-remembered bushes of lavender, and jessamine, and cistus (each growing where it has stood since we were born) , fall on our senses like the familiar note of some dear old tune. ”

“ The woman with golden hair had disappeared. We saw her neither in the waves where just before she had glittered like a star, nor on the shore, where her white form had stood in relief like a luminary against the blackness of the alders. Now all reposed in mournful silence: not a ripple upon the water, not a breath among the leaves. And in the middle of the pool rose majestically towards heaven a pale water-lily, mounting upward like a white flame.
The gamekeeper drew a long breath.
"God has protected us," murmured he, "but let no one say now that it was not the letawitza." ”