George Meredith

"Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled."

"Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing."

"On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend."

"The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts."

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life! - In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight oceans force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!"

"What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is warm. Intelligence and instinct now are one. But nature says: My children most they seem When they least know me: therefore I decree That they shall suffer. Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. Then if we study Nature we are wise."

"Its past parsons to console us: No, nor no doctor fetch for me: I can die without my bolus; Two of a trade, lass, never agree! Parson and Doctor!--dont they love rarely Fighting the devil in other mens fields! Stand up yourself and match him fairly: Then see how the rascal yields!"

"Into the breast that gives the rose, Shall I with shuddering fall?"

"Earth, the mother of all, Moves on her stedfast way, Gathering, flinging, sowing. Mortals, we live in her day, She in her children is growing."

"For singing till his heaven fills, Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes."

"Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law."

"The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one spirit voice."