Quote#Nature
Once when the days were ages
Quote byRichard Henry Stoddard · 1825–1903
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Poems of Richard Henry Stoddard (1880), "Brahma's Answer", p. 386..
English (original)
Once when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. Each questioned each to know Whence came the Heavens above, and whence the Earth below.
— Richard Henry Stoddard
More from Richard Henry Stoddard
All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty—Love!
A voice of greeting from the wind was sent, The mists enfolded me with soft white arms, The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms, And every little daisy in the grass Did look into my face and smile to see me …
We have two lives about us, Two worlds in which we dwell; Within us, and without us, Alternate Heaven and Hell: Without, the somber Real, Within our hearts of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!
Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands, Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands, Silent above the flowers, her children lost, Slain by the arrows of the early frost.
Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!
We love in others what we lack ourselves, And would be every thing but what we are.