“It is time to be old,
To take in sail: -
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: 'No more!”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Terminus http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20600&c=323
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is time to be old, To take in sail: - The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal round…" by Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

Related quotes

“Moved by the god of song, I set out to commemorate the heroes of old who sailed the good ship Argo up the Straits into the Black Sea and between the Cyanean Rocks in quest of the Golden Fleece.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Opening lines
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book I. Preparation and Departure

Avner Strauss photo

“The mind is like a sea, few are those who dare sail, most stand on the shore and watch. Artist pages.”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

A.S.

“Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.”

Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799–1859) British poet and critic

The Devil's Progress (1849)

John Updike photo

“Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Hugging the Shore, foreword (1983)

Alfred Noyes photo

“Every little glimmering pond
Claims the mighty shores beyond;
Shores no seaman ever hailed,
Seas no ship has ever sailed.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan
Context: p>Carol, every violet has
Heaven for a looking-glass!Every little valley lies
Under many-clouded skies;
Every little cottage stands
Girt about with boundless lands;
Every little glimmering pond
Claims the mighty shores beyond;
Shores no seaman ever hailed,
Seas no ship has ever sailed.All the shores when day is done
Fade into the setting sun,
So the story tries to teach
More than can be told in speech.</p

Fernando Pessoa photo

“The blighter that is at the end of the sea
On the pitch-black night raised itself flying;
Round the vessel it flew three times,
Three times it flew creaking,
And said, 'Who dared pierce
Into my dens that I do not reveal,
My black ceilings of the end of the world?'
And the helmsman said, trembling,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

'Whose sails are these then which I rub against?
Whose the keels I see and hear?'
Said the blighter, and rolled three times,
Three times it rolled filthy and bulky,
'Who attempts what is solely my power,
I who abide where no one ever could see me
And who drip the fears of the depthless sea?'
And the helmsman trembled, and said,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

Three times he raised his hands from the helm,
Three times he had them rooted on the helm,
And said after trembling three times,
'Here at the helm I am more than myself:
I am a People who wants the sea that is yours;
And more than the blighter, that my soul fears
And rolls on the darkness of the end of the world,
Orders the will, that ties me at the helm,
Of His Majesty King John the Second!'”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "O Mostrengo" http://www.inverso.pt/Mensagem/MarPortugues/mostrengo.htm, lines 1–9, trans. Charles Eglington ( Listen to the poem on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ihd-ECpYM)
Message

James Thomson (B.V.) photo

“Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XV
Sunday Up the River (1865)

“Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Address at University of Exeter (26 October 1978)

Geoffrey of Monmouth photo

“Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed; now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ;
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy,
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.”
Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna<br/>Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim.<br/>Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis.<br/>Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum;<br/>Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis,<br/>Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis<br/>Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna
Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim.
Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis.
Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum;
Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis,
Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis
Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.
Bk. 1, ch. 11; p. 101.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

John Kendrick Bangs photo

“For me, my craft is sailing on,
Through mists to-day, clear seas anon.
Whate’er the final harbor be
’T is good to sail upon the sea!”

John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922) American author, editor and satirist

The Voyage.

Related topics