Bayard Taylor Quotes - Page 2

Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,-- Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,-- Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.

The stream from Wisdom's well, Which God supplies, is inexhaustible.

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici.

An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I should one day behold the scenes, among which my fancy had so long wandered.

Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force.

As I toiled up the Mount of Olives, in the very footsteps of Christ, panting with the heat and the difficult ascent, I found it utterly impossible to conceive that the Deity, in human form, had walked there before me.

I cannot assume emotions I do not feel, and must describe Jerusalem as I found it. Since being here, I have read the accounts of several travellers, and in many cases the devotional rhapsodies - the ecstacies of awe and reverence - in which they indulge, strike me as forced and affected.

The lamp you lighted in the olden time Will show you my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme: A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears... Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years.

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye - high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.

The clouds are scudding across the moon, A misty light is on the sea; The wind in the shrouds has a wintry tune, And the foam is flying free.

Pansies in soft April rains Fill their stalks with honeyed sap Drawn from Earth's prolific lap.

Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows - the south and east oriels - are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

The glories of the possible are ours.

Love's humility is love's true pride.

The hollows are heavy and dank With the steam of the Goldenrods.

Really,' thought I, 'we call Baltimore the 'Monumental City' for its two marble columns, and here is Edinburg with one at every street-corner!

We follow and race In shifting chase, Over the boundless ocean-space! Who hath beheld when the race begun? Who shall behold it run?

Life lives only in success.

The knowledge of my sin Is half-repentance.

The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics - the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw - but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse.

The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown.

Although Damascus is considered the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near it.