Alexander Smith

Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

The soul of man is like the rolling world,
One half in day, the other dipt in night;
The one has music and the flying cloud,
The other, silence and the wakeful stars.

We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! And then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam,
To meet no more.

The saddest thing that befalls a soul
Is when it loses faith in God and woman.

We hear the wail of the remorseful winds
In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

Some books are drenchèd sands
On which a great soul’s wealth lies all in heaps,
Like a wrecked argosy.

The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.

Everything is sweetened by risk.

Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.

Each time we love,
We turn a nearer and a broader mark
To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.

In winter, when the dismal rain Comes down in slanting lines,
And Wind, that grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines.

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.