Richard Francis Burton Quotes

Cease, man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;
Enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink,
But is the dance less full of fun?

What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,
We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die.

Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary,
where live his little span of life secure?
and 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms
that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?

Fid-mer,” or the evening flyer, is the Somali name for a bat. These little animals are not disturbed in houses, because they keep off flies and mosquitoes, the plagues of the Somali country. Flies abound in the very jungles wherever cows have been, and settle in swarms upon the traveller. Before the monsoon their bite is painful, especially that of the small green species; and there is a red variety called “Diksi as,” whose venom, according to the people, causes them to vomit. The latter abounds in Gulays and the hill ranges of the Berberah country: it is innocuous during the cold season. The mosquito bites bring on, according to the same authority, deadly fevers: the superstition probably arises from the fact that mosquitoes and fevers become formidable about the same time.

So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.