Quotes
Quotes about Day
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
Fate cannot harm me,--I have dined to-day.
One of those heavenly days that cannot die.
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
Oh for a single hour of that Dundee
Who on that day the word of onset gave!
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows.
But thou that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.
Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.
It sounds like stories from the laud of spirits
If any man obtains that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
. . . . . . . . .
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,--love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,--
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
From his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.
Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?
The red-letter days now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days.
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
. . . . . . . . .
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
. . . . . . . . .
Sabbathless Satan!
No Drury Lane for you to-day.
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er;
And hearts that once beat high for praise
Now feel that pulse no more.
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.
The scene was more beautiful far to the eye
Than if day in its pride had arrayed it.
We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!
