Chapter 94
Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them, Like instincts, unawares.
A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet.
BRYAN W. PROCTOR.
_The Sea_.
The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
I never was on the dull, tame sh.o.r.e, But I loved the great sea more and more.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
_Locksley Hall_.
He will hold thee, when his pa.s.sion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
_In Memoriam_. xxvii.
'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
_Fatima_. St. 3.
O Love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
_The Princess_. Canto iv.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Canto 7.
Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay.
_Lady Clara Vere de Vere_.
From yon blue heaven above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of loner descent.
HENRY TAYLOR
_Philip Van Artevelde_.
Part i. Act i. Sc. 5.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.