Whim

“ Children of wealth or want, to each is given
One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven!
Enough if these their outward shows impart;
The rest is thine,—the scenery of the heart.
If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow,
Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow ”

“ In all my works Thy presence find,
And prove Thy good and perfect will.
Preserve me from my calling’s snare,
And hide my simple heart above,
Above the thorns of choking care,
The gilded baits of worldly love. ”

“ It was then that the pleasures of knowledge, the joys of thought, the emotions of eloquence, were all called into play to charm and move and plunge into a profound and strange intoxication this noble and tender heart which had never known either love or sorrow.... One can imagine that everything helped on the inevitable end. ”

“ Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,—they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. ”

“ The soul, the mother of deep fears,
Of high hopes infinite,
Of glorious dreams, mysterious tears,
Of sleepless inner sight;
Lovely, but solemn, it arose,
Unfolding what no more might close.
The red-leaved tablets, [1] undefiled,
As yet, by evil thought—
Oh! ”

“ And added to both these we find the dream vision of the psychic, with the poet's soul of inspiration, sublime ideality and the gentle tender heart, alive with all the common human emotions; and at last, blended and transmuted and made vibrant by that great spiritual insight born on the heights of human revelation we find ourselves whole, grand, developed, humanly divine creatures, walking in glad comradeship with God. ”

“ From thy pure spirit's treasury divine,
To wake one tear of purifying flow,
To soften one wrung heart for Thee and Thine;
So shall the life breathed through the lowly strain,
Be as the meek wild-flower's—if transient, yet not vain. ”

“ Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air:
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years:
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge.
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream. ”

“ So in these depths of the soul's life the arrangements and re-arrangements of units go on, while on the surface the results appear from moment to moment in sensations keen or dull, in perceptions clear or vague, in judgments wise or foolish, in memories gay or sad, in sordid or lofty trains of thought, in gusts of anger or thrills of love. ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world. ”

“ With such natures love is an instinct; and it is to instinct, after all, that we must look for everything that is fresh and poetic in humanity. We have all made this sacrifice to culture,—a sacrifice of force to expression. ”

“ And tho' every Kind of Passion, even the most disagreeable, such as Grief and Anger, are observ'd, when excited by Poetry, to convey a Pleasure and Satisfaction, from a Mechanism of Nature, not easy to be explain'd: Yet those more elevated or softer Affections have a peculiar Influence, and please from more than one Cause or Principle. ”

“ At such seasons the chords of feeling are lightly touched, as if fanned by the wings of some passing seraph, and they vibrate only to what is calm and holy. Selfishness, prejudice, and passion, have no entrance there; and man is, for a while, what God designed him, a rich-toned instrument thrilled by the slightest influence of heaven. ”

“ Standing one on each side of the gushing fountain, and laving their hands in the limpid water, they called upon God to hear and register their vows of truth and love—vows which were, perhaps, less eloquent than deep, but uttered with all the quiet fervour of two young hearts as yet unseared and unsoured by the trouble, the duplicity, the selfishness, and the bitterness of the world. ”

“ What a beautiful fabric would be human nature—what a divine guide would be human reason—if Love were indeed the stratum of the one, and the inspiration of the other! What a world of reasonings, not immediately obvious, did the sage of old open to our inquiry, when he said the pathetic was the truest part of the sublime. ”

“ In the midst of all the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no household affections. ”

“ How unworthy of our nature, and of the Being who formed us, is this view. To those who entertain it, we must say, “what God hath cleansed, that call not thou common, or unclean.” Far, indeed, are they, to whom we allude, from the elevated and true idea of that sacred tie, which joins the pure in heart. ”

“ Then I fancied a destiny, which only my mind conceived, an invincible passion nourished only by my own fancy, and creating, and I may almost say lending to a man worthless in himself, the qualities of perfection, which I dreamed in the ideals of my poetry ... ”

“ The lofty and serene soul, inaccessible to emotions and vulgar passions, soaring above the clouds and shadows of the world,—follies, falsehoods, hatreds, vanities, and miseries,—dwells in the azure of the sky, and henceforth only feels the profound and subterranean heavings of destiny as the summit of the mountains feels earthquakes. ”

“ Earth's outcast, Heaven's own ransomed one, wert called
In human hearts to give that rapture birth:
Oh! raised from shame to brightness!—there doth lie
The tenderest meaning of His ministry,
Whose undespairing love still owned the spirit’s worth. ”

“ That lit our life when life was very fair,
And leaps our heart towards eyes and mouth and hair;
Oblivious of the undying love grown cold,
Or body sheeted in the churchyard mould.
We stretch out yearning hands and grasp—the air. ”

“ Walk after thy heart’s desire so long as thou livest. Put myrrh on thy head, clothe thyself in fine linen, anoint thyself with the true marvels of god.... Let not thy heart concern itself, until there cometh to thee that great day of lamentation. ”

“ But they whom heaven has either cursed or blessed with minds, over which external circumstances exercise a deeper sway, whose fancies are more vivid, and whose impressions are more acute, require the aid of time to clip the wings of imagination,—to cast a soberer shade over the glowing pictures of hope,—and to teach the art of reducing an ideal standard of felicity and virtue, to one less romantic, but more practical. ”

“ In the inexhaustibleness of the heart's cravings, he finds revelations; and out of those depths, with gloomy grandeur, with fire now smothered and now breaking out, and always with a rapt impetuosity, the worship of his nature springs, escaping like a flame to heaven. ”

“ Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures literally represents the effulgence of the mind. ”

“ To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry,
Like—but oh how different!
Hears not also mortal Life?
Hear not we, unthinking Creatures!
Slaves of Folly, Love, or Strife,
Voices of two different Natures? ”

“ A solemn joy comes o'er me, and a sense
Of triumph, blent with nature's gush of weeping,
As, kindling up the silent stone, I see
The glorious vision, caught by faith, of thee.
Slumberer! love calls thee, for the night is past ”

“ Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. ”

“ Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend, had turned on us a brow of menace. ”

“ The very diversity of theme and manner—this varying change from grave to gay, from lively to severe—is indeed but a reflection of life itself, which with the most fortunate of us dashes our smiles with tears, and even to the most unfortunate imparts something of pleasure and delight. ”

“ And men fed upon them, and mighty they grew.
Ears giddy with custom that sound might not hear,
But it woke up the rest, like an earthquake near;
And that same night of the letter, some strange
Compulsion of soul brought a sense of change ”

“ He recognises with delight the realisation of his wildest fancies, his strangest imaginings, and in presence of this vision of mystery, his spirit floats continually between the dream and the reality. ”

“ If there is nothing shifting or fitful or simply changing about Him, there is everywhere energy and expansion, thought and emotion, effort and experience, joy and sorrow, loneliness and conflict, interior trial and triumph, exterior defeat and supplantation: particular affections, particular humiliations, homely labour, a homely heroism, greatness throughout in littleness. ”

“ Graces free and uncultivated were there likewise, and the honest outpourings of the heart, subjected to no dull sneer from the lips of false refinement, burst forth with the touching force of simplicity and truth. The universal weaknesses of our nature mingled with all the rest, and varied the drama through a thousand parts. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ This divine spark, derived from the source of universal life, is the spirit, the active and mysterious and incomprehensible element of our being, which baffles all our explanations, and without which we are nothing. ”

“ Or, to express the same meaning without metaphor, Prepare yourselves, says she to us, to gather the fruit of that grand mystery which we are going to celebrate, by humiliation of heart, meekness, and charity, rectitude of intention, uniformity of living, renunciation of your own wisdom and your own righteousness; mortifying the flesh and humbling the spirit. ”

“ Temptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy, with ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously change and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and ideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in depth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and interpenetration. ”

“ I speak not to fastidious ears, but to the pure in heart, to whom all things are pure. I speak of eternal verities, before whose massive force the heart trembles and bows itself, as reeds before the tempest. ”

“ I discover in men dazzling perspectives, with Paradises in the clouds and distant felicities. I pour into their souls the eternal insanities, projects of happiness, plans for the future, dreams of glory, and oaths of love, as well as virtuous resolutions. ”

“ Their spirits rise in rebellion against their condition, and soar into that fantastic realm of the imagination, above and outside the material world; a realm created by the Divine Being for the renewal of man's spirit, and giving him an opportunity for the play of his fancy. ”

“ As in lofty experiences of appreciation of beauty, or of music, or when the chords of life are swept by a great love, or by a momentous moral issue, the spirit rises in mystical experience to a form of consciousness which no longer marks clock-time and succession of events, whether outward or inward. ”

“ Angelic influences, unseen and unheard amid the hard struggles of their outward life, became visible and audible through the unconscious innocence of their little one. For the second time in his life, a vision of beauty and love gleamed across the rugged path of that honest, laborious man. ”

“ What a mingling of material and spiritual, of human and almost divine! What words can express, what lines portray the beauty of the human countenance? Who can describe or adequately define the loveliness that streams from human eyes, or echoes from the human voice? ”

“ And in those clothes perhaps you'd prate,
Couldst thou but speak or meditate,
Oh, but times then were better still.
'Tis fate's old witticism ill.
So, it may be a better fate
When hearts will cease to meditate. ”