95 Quotes by Bayard Taylor

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

The lamp you lighted in the olden time Will show you my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme: A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears... Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years...

And far and wide, in a scarlet tide, The poppy's bonfire spread.

Labor, you know, is prayer.

Eccentricity is developed monomania.

But who will watch my lilies, When their blossoms open white? By day the sun shall be sentry, And the moon and the stars by night!

The source of each accordant strain Lies deeper than the Poet's brain. First from the people's heart must spring The passions which he learns to sing; They are the wind, the harp is he, To voice their fitful melody,-- The language of their varying fate, Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,-- The talisman which holds inwrought The touchstone of the listener's thought; That penetrates each vain disguise, And brings his secret to his eyes.

Departed suns their trails of splendor drew Across departed summers: whispers came From voices, long ago resolved again Into the primeval Silence, and we twain, Ghosts of our present selves, yet still the same, As in a spectral mirror wandered there.

I know I am--that simplest bliss The millions of my brothers miss. I know the fortune to be born, Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.