Quotes
Quotes - Morris
Solid men of Boston, banish long potations!
Solid men of Boston, make no long orations!
O give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I 'll protect it now.
A song for our banner! The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station:
"United we stand, divided we fall!"
It made and preserves us a nation!
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever,
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the flag of our Union forever!
Near the lake where drooped the willow,
Long time ago!
In teaching me the way to live
It taught me how to die.
The wind that sighs before the dawn
Chases the gloom of night,
The curtains of the East are drawn,
And suddenly--'t is light.
The love of the Right, tho' cast down, the hate of victorious Ill,
All are sparks from the central fire of a boundless beneficent will.
Sound, jocund strains; on pipe and viol sound,
Young voices sing;
Wreathe every door with snow-white voices round,
For lo! 't is Spring!
Winter has passed with its sad funeral train,
And Love revives again.
Toil is the law of life and its best fruit.
The victories of Right
Are born of strife.
There were no Day were there no Night,
Nor, without dying, Life.
The world still needs
Its champion as of old, and finds him still.
Call no faith false which e'er hath brought
Relief to any laden life,
Cessation to the pain of thought,
Refreshment mid the dust of strife.
Rest springs from strife and dissonant chords beget
Divinest harmonies.
The passionate love of Right, the burning hate of Wrong.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
The idle singer of an empty day.
Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe,
A tale of folly and of wasted life,
Hope against hope, the bitter dregs of strife,
Ending, where all things end, in death at last.
Slayer of the Winter, art thou here again?
O welcome, thou that bring'st the Summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
Within a little time must ye go by.
Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give!
Forgetfulness of grief I yet may gain;
In some wise may come ending to my pain;
It may be yet the Gods will have me glad!
Yet, Love, I would that thee and pain I had!
Earth, left silent by the wind of night,
Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.
Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that Winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.
A world made to be lost,--
A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost.
To happy folk
All heaviest words no more of meaning bear
Than far-off bells saddening the Summer air.
