Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall
Autumn arrives like a warrior with the stain of blood upon his brazen mail. His crimson scarf is rent. His scarlet banner drips with gore. His step is like a flail upon the threshing floor.
The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.
The history of the past is a mere puppet-show. A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again. You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out, and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again. And it is all over.
The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.
Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man?