Quotes
Quotes about Soul
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!
These are the times that try men's souls.
Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripened in our northern sky.
For though his body's under hatches,
His soul has gone aloft.
I had a soul above buttons.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits we are deified;
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee!
. . . . . .
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:
So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither.
And the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain.
Recognizes ever and anon
The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.
I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy, for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with his native sea.
And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of memory images and precious thoughts
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.
The gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.
But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.
And when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,--alas! too few.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
On his bold visage middle age
Had slightly press'd its signet sage,
Yet had not quench'd the open truth
And fiery vehemence of youth:
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare.
Return unto thy rest, my soul,
From all the wanderings of thy thought,
From sickness unto death made whole,
Safe through a thousand perils brought.
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,--
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,--
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,--
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.
Melt and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!
