Quotes from Alfred

Half the night I waste in sighs, Half in dreams I sorrow after The delight of early skies; In a wakeful dose I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes, For the meeting of the morrow, The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies.

A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

Any man that walks the mead In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find A meaning suited to his mind.

Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...

Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever...

Gone — flitted away, Taken the stars from the night and the sun From the day! Gone, and a cloud in my heart.

Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.

I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?"

Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.