“The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.”
Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 4 (1805).
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William Wordsworth 306
English Romantic poet 1770–1850Related quotes

The Dream of Home.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Falsely attributed to Darwin, but actually from The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) by Thomas Dixon, page 134 http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/c/11773-the-clansman-by-thomas-dixon?start=133.
Misattributed

G.K. Gokhale urged her to join the Indian Independence Movement quoted in [Naravane, Vishwanath S., Sarojini Naidu: An Introduction to Her Life, Work and Poetry, http://books.google.com/books?id=h6v8HsRUBucC&pg=PA133, 1 January 1996, Orient Blackswan, 978-81-250-0931-3, 133]

West-östlicher Diwan, motto (1819)

“The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.”

“Fight on land and sea
All men want to be free
If they don't
never mind
we'll abolish all mankind”
Singers and Patients, act 2, scene 31 (p. 98)
Marat/Sade (1963)

Sun Stone (1957)
Context: I want to go on, to go beyond; I cannot;
the moment scatters itself in many things,
I have slept the dreams of the stone that never dreams
and deep among the dreams of years like stones
have heard the singing of my imprisoned blood,
with a premonition of light the sea sang,
and one by one the barriers give way,
all of the gates have fallen to decay,
the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,
has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed,
unfastened my being of its swaddling clothes,
has rooted me out of my self, and separated
me from my animal sleep centuries of stone
and the magic of reflections resurrects
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:

“We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!”
Dying words as his frigate Squirrel sank in the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores, 5 August 1583, Quoted in Richard Hakluyt Third and Last Volume of the Voyages of the English Nation, 1600. Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353