I praise Thee while my days go on;

I love Thee while my days go on:

Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
With emptied arms and treasure lost,

I thank Thee while my days go on.
And having in Thy life-depth thrown
Being and suffering (which are one),
As a child drops his pebble small

Down some deep well, and hears it fall
SO I. THY DAYS GO ON.

Smiling 1998

GRAVE

Mrs. Browning: De Profundis. Sts. 23 and 24 see Churchyard, Death, Funeral, Sexton. An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye, Give him a little earth for charity.

1999

Shaks. Henry VIII. Act iv. Sc. 2.

One destin'd period men in common have,
The great, the base, the coward, and the brave,
All food alike for worms, companions in the grave.
2000

Lansdowne: On Death

Grass grows at last above all graves, you say? 2001

Julia C. R. Dorr: Grass-Grown.
The Grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou'rt named: Nature appall'd,
Shakes off her wonted firmness.

2002

Blair: The Grave. Line 9.

Here all the mighty troublers of the earth,
Who swam to sov'reign rule through seas of blood;
Th' oppressive, sturdy, man-destroying villains,
Who ravag'd kingdoms, and laid empires waste,
And in a cruel wantonness of power

Thinn'd states of half their people, and gave up
To want the rest; now, like a storm that's spent,
Lie hush'd.

2003

Blair: The Grave. Line 208

When self-esteem, or others' adulation,

Would cunningly persuade us we were something
Above the common level of our kind;

The grave gainsays the smooth complexion'd flattery,
And with blunt truth acquaints us what we are.

2004

Blair: The Grave. Line 232

Here the o'erloaded slave flings down his burden
From his gall'd shoulders; and, when the cruel tyrant,
With all his guards and tools of power about him,
Is meditating new, unheard-of hardships,

Mocks his short arm, and, quick as thought, escapes
Where tyrants vex not, and the weary rest.

2005

Blair: The Grave. Line 501

Where is the house for all the living found?

Go ask the deaf, the dumb, the dead;

All answer, without voice or sound,

Each resting in his bed;

Look down and see,
Beneath thy feet,

A place for thee;

2008 James Montgomery: In Mem. of the Rev. James Harvey.

I like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls

The burial-ground, God's Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith, that we shall rise again

At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.
2009

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

Longfellow: God's Acre.

And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

2010

Longfellow: Psalm of Life.

The most magnificent and costly dome,
Is but an upper chamber to a tomb;

No spot on earth but has supplied a grave,
And human skulls the spacious ocean pave.

2011

Young: Poem on the Last Day. Bk. ii. Line 87

Body hides - where?

Ferns of all feather,

Mosses and heather,

Yours be the care!

2012

Robert Browning: La Saisiaz. Prologue

GREATNESS- see Ambition, Authority, Farewell, Honor. Some are born great, some achieve greatness,

And some have greatness thrust upon them.

2013

Shaks.: Tw. Night. Act ii. Sc. 5

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.
2014
Shaks.: M. for M. Act ii. Sc. 2

Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. 2015

Shaks.: M. for M. Act ii. Sc. 2 Heaven knows, I had no such intent; But that necessity so bow'd the state, That I and greatness were compell'd to kiss. 2016 Small curs are not regarded when they grin; But great men tremble when the lion roars.

Shaks.: 2 Henry IV. Act iii. Sc. 1

2017 Shaks.: 2 Henry VI. Act iii. Sc. 1. 'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, Must fall out with men too. What the declined is, He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,

As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies, Show not their mealy wings but to the summer. 2018

Shaks.: Troil. and Cress. Act iil. Sc. 3

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
2019

Shaks.: Jul. Cæsar. Act i. Sc. 2.

Rightly to be great,

Is, not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honor's at the stake.

2020

Shaks.: Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. 4.

The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
That makes him honored, or begets him hate;
For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
The moon, being clouded, presently is missed,
But little stars may hide them when they list.
The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire.
And unperceived fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
2021

Shaks.: R. of Lucrece. Line 1004

No great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.

2022

George Eliot: The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. i

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.

2025

Pope: Prologue to Addison's Cato. Line 21

Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Form'd by thy converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.
2026

Pope: Essay on Man. Epis. iv. Line 377.
What is station high?

'Tis a proud mendicant; it boasts, and begs; It begs an alms of homage from the throng, And oft the throng denies its charity.

2027

Young: Night Thoughts. Night vi. Line 287.

He, who ascends to mountain-tops shall find

Their loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds of snow;
He, who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Tho' high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head.

2028
Great truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of Eternity.

Byron: Ch. Harold. Canto iii. St. 45.

2029

James Russell Lowell: Sonnet vi

In joys, in grief, in triumphs, in retreat,
Great always, without aiming to be great.

2030 Roscommon: Dr. Chetwood to the Earl. Line 67. Great hearts have largest room to bless the small; Strong natures give the weaker home and rest. 2031

Lucy Larcom: Sonnet. The Presence.

Are not great

Men the models of nations?

2032

Owen Meredith: Lucile. Pt. ii. Canto vi. St. 29.

GREECE.

The mountains look on Marathon

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dream'd that Greece might still be free.

2033

Byron: Don Juan. Canto i'i. St. 86.

Clime of the unforgotten brave!

Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave,
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave;
Shrine of the mighty! can it be,

That this is all remains of thee?

2034

Byron: Giaour. Line 113

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!

Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
That what they have not, that which they possess,
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess

Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
2036

Shaks.: R. of Lucrece. Line 134.

GRIEF - see Consolation, Sorrow, Tears, Weeping. Every one can master a grief but he that has it. 2037

Shaks.: Much Ado. Act iii. Sc. 2.

A heavier task could not have been impos'd,
Thun I to speak my griefs unspeakable.
2040

Shaks.: Com. of Errors. Act i. Sc. 1.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so:
For sorrow's eye glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects.

2041

Shaks.: Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 2 Of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

2042

Shaks.: Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 2

My grief lies all within;

And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul;
There lies the substance.

2043

Shaks.: Richard II. Act iv. Sc. 1