Familiar Quotations

MATTHEW ARNOLD. 1822-1888.

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.

Strew on her roses, roses,

And never a spray of yew!

In quiet she reposes;

Ah, would that I did too!

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blamed the living man.

Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?

Shakespeare

Requiescat

Growing Old

Memorial Verses.

Wandering between two worlds, — one dead,
The other powerless to be born.

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

Ibid.

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.

Essays in Criticism. Heinrich Heine. There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, "To make reason and the will of God prevail."

Culture and Anarchy. P. 8.

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 1822-

He serves his party best who serves the country best.1

Inaugural Address, March 5, 1877

1 See Pope, page 339.

LEONARD HEATH.

On a lone barren isle, where the wild roaring billows
Assail the stern rock, and the loud tempests rave,
The hero lies still, while the dew-drooping willows,

Like fond weeping mourners, lean over his grave.
The lightnings may flash and the loud thunders rattle;
He heeds not, he hears not, he's free from all pain;
He sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle;
No sound can awake him to glory again!1

The Grave of Bonaparte.
Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle,

No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o'er the plain: Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,

No sound can awake thee to glory again.

Ibid.

1 This song was composed and set to music, about 1842, by Leonard Heath,

of Nashua, who died a few years ago. Hampshire, 1883, p. 760.

- BELA CHAPIN: The Poets of New

In winter, when the dismal rain
Comes down in slanting lines,

And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.

Ibid.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

Ibid

H. F. CHORLEY. 1831-1872.

song

to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long!

The Brave Old Oak.

Then here's to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who stands in his pride alone!
And still flourish he a hale green tree
When a hundred years are gone!

1 Two hands upon the breast, and labour is past. — Russian Proverb.

Ibid

ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. 1832-.

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight!
Make me a child again, just for to-night!

Rock me to sleep

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain!

Take them, and give me my childhood again! Ibid.

BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER. 1835-

We have exchanged the Washingtonian dignity for the Jeffersonian simplicity, which was in truth only another name for the Jacksonian vulgarity.

Address at the Washington Centennial Service in
St. Paul's Chapel, New York, April 30, 1889.

If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent,a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the royalty of virtue.

Ibid.

FRANCIS M. FINCH.

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;

Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.1

The Blue and the Gray

1 This poem first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly."