A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage,
But wise through time, and narrative with age,
In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice,--
A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
So ends the bloody business of the day.
Those who in quarrels interpose
Must often wipe a bloody nose.
Bone and Skin, two millers thin,
Would starve us all, or near it;
But be it known to Skin and Bone
That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
Sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain
And Fear and Bloodshed,--miserable train!--
Turns his necessity to glorious gain.
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good.
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
Earth helped him with the cry of blood.
Who o'er the herd would wish to reign,
Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain!
Vain as the leaf upon the stream,
And fickle as a changeful dream;
Fantastic as a woman's mood,
And fierce as Frenzy's fever'd blood.
Thou many-headed monster thing,
Oh who would wish to be thy king!
On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.
Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war,
Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.
The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
How widely its agencies vary,--
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,--
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.
O God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
What potent blood hath modest May!
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,
His eye was dim and cold,
The hairs on his brow were silver-white,
And his blood was thin and old.