William C. Bryant
Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.Collection: Law
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase is fruits of innocence and blessedness.Collection: Roots
Poetry is the eloquence of verse.Collection: Poetry
The groves were God's first temple. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication.Collection: Men
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.Collection: Ocean
Beautiful isles! beneath the sunset skies tall, silver-shafted palm-trees rise, between full orange-trees that shade the living colonade.Collection: Beautiful
War, like all other situations of danger and of change, calls forth the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of men.Collection: War
Yet will that beauteous image make The dreary sea less drear And thy remembered smile will wake The hope that tramples fearCollection: Sea
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.Collection: Ocean
The groves were God’s first temples.Collection: Firsts