“By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.”
William Collins (1721–1759) English poet, born 1721
Source: How Sleep the Brave (1748), line 7.
“By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!”
Ode written in the year 1746. A variation of the first two lines is "By hands unseen the knell is rung; / By fairy forms their dirge is sung".
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By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bles…" by William Collins?
William Collins19
English poet, born 1721 1721–1759Related quotes
“Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?”
Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer
Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Come calm content serene and sweet,
O gently guide my pilgrim feet
To find thy hermit cell.”
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 161.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet
For the apartment in Chepstow Castle where Henry Marten the Regicide was imprisoned thirty years.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1900s, A Square Deal (1903)
Context: The outcome was equally fatal, whether the country fell into the hands of a wealthy oligarchy which exploited the poor or whether it fell under the domination of a turbulent mob which plundered the rich. In both cases there resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of liberty to all citizens -- destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been victorious as well as that which had momentarily been defeated. The death-knell of the Republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: This means that gravestones are fragile
and granite is softer than wax.
Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity
I shall soon turn gray
or change into another person.
Why do you beckon me with your hand?
For one moment of peace
I would give the peace of the tomb.
“our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.”
Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer
Source: Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny
Dante Alighieri book Vita Nuova
ne le braccia avea
madonna involta in un drappo dormendo.
Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo
lei paventosa umilmente pascea:
appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I, First Sonnet (tr. Mark Musa)
T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader
In an interview with Tell Magazine, Nigeria, on the reason for his passion for the needy - "The People Come First - TB Joshua" http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10335740/The-People-Come-First---TB-Joshua (December 24 2007)