tomb quotes

The very knowledge that he lived in vain, That all was over on this side the tomb, Had made Despair a smilingness assume.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza16.

Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.

- Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle Cavendish
  Plays,'Nature's Three Daughters', pt.2, act 5, sc.20.

To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet of earliest bloom, And rifle all the breathing spring.

-William Collins
  'Dirge in Cymbeline'.

Virtues neglected then, adored become, And graces slighted, blossom on the tomb.

- George Crabbe
  The Borough, letter 2,'The Church', l.133^4.

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'.

I have but one request to make at my departure from this world, it isthe charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives, dare now vindicate them, let no prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justicetomycharacter.Whenmycountry takesher place among thenations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.

- Robert Emmet
  Speech before being sentenced.

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood isrunning money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

- Allen Ginsberg
  Howl and Other Poems,'Howl, II'.

In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Twice-Told Tales,'The Haunted Mind'.

My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on myTomb.

-John Keats
  Letter to Benjamin Bailey,14  Aug.

   And so sep u' lchered in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

-John Milton
  'On Shakespeare'.

That my old bitter heart was pierced in this black doom, That foreign devils have made our land a tomb, That the sun that was Munster's glory has gone down Has made me a beggar before you,Valentine Brown.

- Egan Gaelic name  Aodhaga  n OŁ   Rathaille O'Rahilly
'Valentine Brown', translated from the Irish by Michael O'Donovan (pseudonym Frank O'Connor).

As I grow older and older, And totter towards the tomb, I find that I care less and less Who goes to bed with whom.

- Dorothy L(eigh) Sayers
'That'sWhy I Never Read Modern Novels', collected in Janet Hitchman Such a Strange Lady (1975), ch.12.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'The Cloud'.

You will see Coleridgehe who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, through its own internal lighting blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls You will see Huntone of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it isa tomb.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'Letter to Maria Gisborne' l.202^11.

A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.

- Logan Pearsall Smith
Afterthoughts,'Art and Letters'.

Here is all straight and narrow as a tomb Oh shut me not within a little room.

- Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
  Harold's Leap,'The Commuted Sentence'.

Surprised by joyimpatient as the wind I turned to share the transportOh! with whom But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? 928

-William Wordsworth
c.1812  'Surprised by joyimpatient as the wind', l.1^4 (published1815).The poet's second daughter, Catherine, who died inJune1812, is the'thee'referred to in the poem.

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

-William Wordsworth
  The River Duddon, no.34,'After-Thought', l.10^14.