Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Tennyson: The Princess.

A woman's love

Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak,
And by its weakness overcomes.

Lowell: Legend of Brittany.

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship

fall:

A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

Music; see Bells.

Holmes: A Mother's Secret.

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.

Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,

Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringèd noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

For if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold.

Milton: Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Throng'd around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting.

Collins: The Passions.

Music resembles poetry; in each

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.

Pope: Essay on Criticism.

Here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed

to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Browning: Abt Vogler.

I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing.

Tennyson: In Memoriam.

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
and skim away.

Their wings.

Tennyson: In Memoriam.

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

The gift of Song was chiefly lent

To give consoling music for the joys

We lack, and not for those which we possess.

Bayard Taylor: Poet's Journal.

The silent organ loudest chants

The master's requiem.

Emerson: Dirge.

God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.

Longfellow: The Singers.

The half of music, I have heard men say,

Is to have grieved.

Stephen Phillips: Marpessa.

Sidney Lanier: To Beethoven.

-Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme.

Sing as you will, O singers all,

Who sing because you want to sing!

Sing any song and anyhow,

But Sing! Sing! Sing!

Nature; see Deity.

James Whitcomb Riley.

In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Nature, despairing e'er to make the like,

Brake suddenly the mold in which 'twas fashion'd.
Massinger: Parliament of Love.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida.

Nature ever yields reward

To him who seeks, and loves her best.

Bryan Waller Procter: Above and Below.

Man's rich with little, were his judgment true;
Nature is frugal, and her wants are few.

Young: Love of Fame.

Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand
Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year;

How mighty, how majestic are thy works!
With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul
That sees astonish'd! and astonish'd sings!

Thomson: Seasons. Winter.

First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Pope: Essay on Criticism.

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom, Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine.

Shelley: Song of Prosperpine.

O solemn-beating heart

Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art
Bound unto man's by cords he cannot sever.

Elizabeth B. Browning: A Sea-Side Walk.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.

Bryant: Thanatopsis.