Life Imitating Art

Is there not An art, a music, and a stream of words That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life? -William Wordsworth, Home at Grasmere, 1800

Guessing

Guessing at what shall happily be hid, As the real purpose of a pyramid. -George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan: Canto the Eighth, 1823

Harmony of Leaves

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man's image and his cry. -William Butler Yeats, The Sorrow of Love, 1893

The Poets Light But Lamps

The Poets light but Lamps-- -Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, No. 883, 1862

Possibilities

I dwell in Possibilities-- A fairer House than Prose-- More numerous of Windows-- Superior -- for Doors. -Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, No. 657, 1862

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Obelisk of Fire

And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Crossing the Bar

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place     The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face     When I have crossed the bar. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Crossing the Bar

Image of the Sky

Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore, Pav'd with the image of the sky.... -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo (excerpt), 1824

Night Passing

I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798

Calm Night

The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair -Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, 1867