rainbow quotes

   So in the simple blessing of a rainbow, In the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror, I have seen visible, Death's artifact Like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.

- Dannie Abse
  'Pathology of Colours'.

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth, And left thee all her lovely hues.

-W(illiam) H(enry) Davies
  'The Kingfisher'.

A rainbowand a cuckoo's song May never come together again; May never come This side the tomb.

-W(illiam) H(enry) Davies
  'A Great Time'.

Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high, There's a land that I heard of Once in a lullaby.

- E(dgar) Y(ip) Harburg
  'Over the Rainbow', sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (music by Harold  Arlen).

The dark notes rose everywhere, so dark, so sombre, they broke into a fountainlight as the rainbow sparkling and immaterial as invisible sources and echoes. The savannahs grew lonelyas the sea and broke again into a wave and forest. Tall trees with black marching boots and feet were clad in the spurs and sharp wings of a butterfly.

- Rolf Harris
  The Palace of the Peacock, ch.11.

Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she isgiven In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings.

-John Keats
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems, 'Lamia', pt.2, l.229^34.

The Lord survives the rainbow of his will.

- RobertTraill Spence,Jr Lowell
  'The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket', last line.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.

- Herman Melville
Billy Budd, Foretopman (first published1924), ch.21.

For coloured girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.

- Ntozake originally Paulette Williams Shange
  Title of 'choreo-poem'.

I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote.

- Robert Louis Stevenson
  Weir of Hermiston (published1896), Dedication'To My Wife'.

Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky! Ayoung man will be wiser byand by; An old man's wit may wander ere he die.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'The Coming of Arthur', l.402^4.

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

-William Wordsworth
  'My heart leaps up when I behold', complete poem (published1807).