Bryan Procter
Death is the tyrant of the imagination.Collection: Death
O human beauty, what a dream art thou, that we should cast our life and hopes away on thee!Collection: Beauty
Oh, the summer night, Has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.Collection: Smile
The sweetest noise on earth, a woman's tongue; A string which hath no discord.Collection: Love
I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more.
There's not a wind but whispers of thy name; And not a flow'r that grows beneath the moon, But in its hues and fragrance tells a tale Of thee, my love.
Even Echo speaks not on these radiant moors.
All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim.
Half the ills we heard within our hearts are ills because we hoard them.
Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream, Gently, - as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream!
Pity speaks to grief More sweetly than a band of instruments.
So mightiest powers buy deepest calms are fed, And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!
The sea! The sea! The open sea!, The blue, the fresh, the ever free!Collection: Beach
I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be, With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoever I go.Collection: Blue
The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies.Collection: Lying
A single star is rising in the east, and from afar sheds a most tremulous lustre; silent Night doth wear it like a jewel on her brow.Collection: Stars
How silent are the winds!Collection: Wind
Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years. I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay.Collection: Dream
Sing! Who sings To her who weareth a hundred rings? Ah, who is this lady fine? The Vine, boys, the Vine! The mother of the mighty Wine, A roamer is she O'er wall and tree And sometimes very good company.Collection: Mother
Shadows fall on even the brightest hours.Collection: Fall
Despair doth strike as deep a furrow in the brain as mischief or remorse.Collection: Brain
Most writers steal a good thing when they can, and when 'Tis safely got 'Tis worth the winning. The worst of 't is we now and then detect em, they ever dream that we suspect em.Collection: Dream
The progress from infancy to boyhood is imperceptible. In that long dawn of the mind we take but little heed. The years pass by us, one by one, little distinguishable from each other. But when the intellectual sun of our life is risen, we take due note of joy and sorrow.Collection: Years
Women are so gentle, so affectionate, so true in sorrow, so untired and untiring! but the leaf withers not sooner, and tropic light fades not more abruptly.Collection: Light
I said that I loved the wise proverb, Brief, simple and deep; For it I'd exchange the great poem That sends us to sleep.Collection: Wise
Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain.Collection: Pain