
“[Charles Brun] was so charming that I always write to him as "My dear Charlotte!"”
Quoted in Mercure de France, I-XII (1953), trans. Jeannette H. Foster (1977)
This Lime-tree Bower my Prison
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“[Charles Brun] was so charming that I always write to him as "My dear Charlotte!"”
Quoted in Mercure de France, I-XII (1953), trans. Jeannette H. Foster (1977)
Poem: A Supplication http://www.bartleby.com/106/102.html.
Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 40
Context: Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace.
“My Life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.”
St. 7
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.
“Modesty is the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.”
Ladies' Home Journal, Volume 72 (1955), p. 156.
Attributed
“My hoarse-sounding horn
Invites thee to the chase, the sport of kings.”
The Chace (1735)
Still Falls the Rain (1940)
Context: See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, — dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown. Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain —
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."
The Rhodora http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/rhodora.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)