Quotes about dew
page 2

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Li Bai photo

“Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower;
Her balcony, glimmering with the bright spring dew,
Is either the tip of earth's Jade Mountain,
Or a moon-edged roof of paradise.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Song Of Pure Happiness I" (清平调之一)

Mary Wollstonecraft photo
George Chapman photo

“As far as white Aurora's dews are sprinkled through the air.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Book VII, line 374, p. 104
The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets (1611)

Edmund Spenser photo

“Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,
And her conception of the joyous Prime.”

Canto 6, stanza 3
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

James Beattie photo

“Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.”

The Country Justice, Part i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This allusion to the dead soldier and his widow on the field of battle was made the subject of a print by Bunbury, under which were engraved the pathos-laden lines of Langhorne. Sir Walter Scott mentioned that the only time he saw Burns this picture was in the room. Burns shed tears over it; and Scott, then a lad of fifteen, was the only person present who could tell him where the lines were to be found. In Lockhart, Life of Scott, vol. i. chap. iv.

Emily Dickinson photo
George William Russell photo

“A shaft of fire that falls like dew,
And melts and maddens all my blood,
From out thy spirit flashes through
The burning glass of womanhood.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo
William Collins photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Margaret Junkin Preston photo

“Gracious as sunshine, sweet as dew
Shut in a lily's golden core.”

Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897) American writer

Agnes, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 458.

Edmund Gosse photo

“The wizard silence of the hours of dew.”

Edmund Gosse (1849–1928) Poet, author, and critic

The White Throat Bartlet's Quotations 1919 http://www.bartleby.com/100/pages/page814.html

John Dryden photo

“He was exhaled; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

On the Death of a Very Young Gentlemen (1700).

Conrad Aiken photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Walter de la Mare photo
Julia Ward Howe photo
Denise Levertov photo

“Let Ariel learn
a blessing for Caliban
and Caliban drink dew from the lotus
open upon the waters.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Conversation in Moscow, The Freeing of the Dust

George William Russell photo
Martin Farquhar Tupper photo

“The dews of Hermon rest upon thee now,
Fair saint and martyr! and yet once again
Faith, hope and charity, like gracious rain,
Fall on thy consecrated virgin brow.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Reconsecrated (15 May 1850), l. 1-4.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

Thomas Moore photo

“When twilight dews are falling soft
Upon the rosy sea, love,
I watch the star whose beam so oft
Has lighted me to thee, love.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

When Twilight Dews.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro photo

“When I gathered flowers
For my girl
From the top of the plum tree
The lower branches
Drenched me with dew.”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XXII, p. 24
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (1976)

Kuvempu photo

“Amidst the early morning dew
Walking across the greenery
And in the evening that is scary
While taking a breath,
Oh, flower, I listen to your song,
Oh flower, I defeat your love.”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

"The Flower", a translation of his first Kannada poem "Poovu".

/ Poet, nature lover and humanist (2004)

Henry Englefield photo

“Her heart was warmed and melted like the dew on roses under the morning sun.”

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1019–1021

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband’s corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….. “In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription:- ‘Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers how long it would last, and was informed by them, that after eleven hundred years, a king named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the other temples in Kashmeer’…Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, ‘Destroyer of Idols’…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413)Kashmir
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Thomas De Witt Talmage photo
Ben Jonson photo

“What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); comparable to "What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade / Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?", Alexander Pope, in To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Sensitive Plant http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=shelley2003060601 (1820), Pt. I, st. 1

John Milton photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“As steals the dew along the flower,
So stole thy smile on me;
I cannot tell the day, nor hour
I first loved thee!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1836-2) (Vol.47) Songs-IV.
The Monthly Magazine

Philip Pullman photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)

Andrew Marvell photo
Fred Weatherly photo
James Whitcomb Riley photo

“One naked star has waded through
The purple shadows of the night,
And faltering as falls the dew
It drips its misty light.”

James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) American poet from Indianapolis

The Beetle.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Shaun White photo

“I'm talkin about Mountain Dews, baby!”

Shaun White (1986) American snowboarder and skateboarder

(2006). "I'm Talking About Mountain Dews Baby" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-1D_MJzsNU Shaun White on CNN News
When asked if he was drinking alcohol on an airplane in an interview.

Jones Very photo
Walter Scott photo

“Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto III, stanza 16 (Coronach, stanza 3).
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Aldo Leopold photo

“Sometimes in June, when I see unearned dividends of dew hung on every lupine, I have doubts about the real poverty of the sands. On solvent farmlands lupines do not even grow, much less collect a daily rainbow of jewels.”

“Wisconsin: The Sand Counties”, p. 102.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Eugene Field photo

“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe—
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.”

Eugene Field (1850–1895) American writer

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/wynkenblynkenandnod.html, st. 1
Love Songs of Childhood (1894)

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt photo
Nina Kiriki Hoffman photo
Robert Hunter photo
Thomas Campbell photo

“While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part II, line 45
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

T. H. White photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Paul Gabriël photo

“An early morning may look superficially gray, but it is not…. the dew is much more colorful than one would believe, often so strongly that the palette fails. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Een vroege morgen kan er oppervlakkig grijs uitzien, maar ze is het niet.. ..de dauw is veel gekleurder dan men wel zou geloven, dikwijls zo sterk dat het palet te kort schiet.
Quote of Paul Gabriël, in a letter to a befriended art-critic; as cited in 'Dauw heeft meer kleur dan men denkt', by Truus Ruiter https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/dauw-heeft-meer-kleur-dan-men-denkt~b14d3e3c/; newspaper 'de Volkskrant', 27 July 1998
Gabriël avoided to use frequently grey in his work, because he loved natural colors
undated quotes

Henry James photo
Jones Very photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Delicious tears! the heart's own dew.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Guerilla Chief
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey photo

“She stood amid the morning dew,
And sang her earliest measure sweet,
Sang as the lark sings, speeding fair,
to touch and taste the purer air”

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905) writer

Coolidge tribute to fellow poet Jean Ingelow from Preface to Poems by Jean Ingelow, Volume II, Roberts Bros 1896 kindle ebook ASIN B0082C1UAI .

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Milan Kundera photo
Hesiod photo

“On the tongue of such an one they shed a honeyed dew, and from his lips drop gentle words.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 82.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
James Macpherson photo
John Muir photo

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

page 438
Last lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
John of the Mountains, 1938

Ilia Chavchavadze photo
William Julius Mickle photo
Alfred Noyes photo

“I have heard the mavis singing
Its love-song to the morn;
I've seen the dew-drop clinging
To the rose just newly born.”

Charles Jefferys (1807–1865) British music publisher

Mary of Argyle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

James Dickey photo

“It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head
Out of dew, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

The Sheep Child (l. 31–35).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

William Julius Mickle photo

“The dews of summer night did fall;
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall
And many an oak that grew thereby.”

Stanza 1, quoted in Walter Scott's Kenilworth (1821), Ch. 6. Compare: "Jove, thou regent of the skies", Alexander Pope, The Odyssey, book ii, line 42; "Now Cynthia, named fair regent of the night", John Gay, Trivia, book iii; "And hail their queen, fair regent of the night", Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, part i, canto ii, line 90.
Cumnor Hall (1784)

Margaret Fuller photo

“With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Thankful and the Thankless
Context: With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.
The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high,
Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky;
While the dear flowers, wht fond humility,
Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye
In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts,
Perfume that homage all around imparts.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The world globes itself in a drop of dew.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.
The world globes itself in a drop of dew.

Margaret Fuller photo

“I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed.”

Though "the Bard" is often reference to William Shakespeare, Fuller here probably uses the term in a generic sense, and in tribute to the poet-philosopher she considered in some ways her mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who may have made such a statement, which she elsewhere quotes as "I have witnessed many a shipwreck, yet still beat noble hearts".
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Context: I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard,
"Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts."
Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.

William Morris photo

“Dawn talks to Day
Over dew-gleaming flowers”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song VII: Dawn Talks to Day
Context: Dawn talks to Day
Over dew-gleaming flowers,
Night flies away
Till the resting of hours:
Fresh are thy feet
And with dreams thine eyes glistening,
Thy still lips are sweet
Though the world is a-listening.
O Love, set a word in my mouth for our meeting,
Cast thine arms round about me to stay my heart's beating!
O fresh day, O fair day, O long day made ours!

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.”

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate, whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? — to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“They will find that “flat” meant “a little rounding;” that “six days” meant “six long times;” that the word “flood” should have been translated “dampness,” “dew,” or “threatened rain…””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: They will find new readings for old texts. They will re-punctuate and re-parse the Old Testament. They will find that “flat” meant “a little rounding;” that “six days” meant “six long times;” that the word “flood” should have been translated “dampness,” “dew,” or “threatened rain...”

Tao Yuanming photo

“Heaven and Earth exist for ever:
Mountains and rivers never change.
But herbs and trees in perpetual rotation
Are renovated and withered by the dews and frosts:
And Man the wise, Man the divine—
Shall he alone escape this law?
Fortuitously appearing for a moment in the World
He suddenly departs, never to return.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Substance speaks to Shadow" (translation by A. Waley)
In A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), 'Poems By Tao Ch'ien', p. 106
Context: Heaven and Earth exist for ever:
Mountains and rivers never change.
But herbs and trees in perpetual rotation
Are renovated and withered by the dews and frosts:
And Man the wise, Man the divine—
Shall he alone escape this law?
Fortuitously appearing for a moment in the World
He suddenly departs, never to return.
How can he know that the friends he has left
Are missing him and thinking of him?
Only the things that he used remain;
They look upon them and their tears flow.
Me no magical arts can save,
Though you may hope for a wizard's aid.
I beg you listen to this advice—
When you can get wine, be sure to drink it.

Marcin Malek photo
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa photo

“Truly, human life is as ephemeral as dew and as brief as lightning.”

In a Grove (1922), quoted in A Study Guide for Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "In a Grove" https://books.google.it/books?id=EAPQDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT13 (Gale, 2017).

David Foster Wallace photo
Paul Gabriël photo

“An early morning may look superficially gray, but it is not.... the dew is much more colorful than one would believe, often so strongly that the palette fails.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Een vroege morgen kan er oppervlakkig grijs uitzien, maar ze is het niet.. ..de dauw is veel gekleurder dan men wel zou geloven, dikwijls zo sterk dat het palet te kort schiet.
Quote of Paul Gabriël, in a letter to a befriended art-critic; as cited in 'Dauw heeft meer kleur dan men denkt', by Truus Ruiter https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/dauw-heeft-meer-kleur-dan-men-denkt~b14d3e3c/; newspaper 'de Volkskrant', 27 July 1998
Gabriël avoided to use frequently grey in his work, because he loved natural colors
undated quotes

Khalil Gibran photo
John Prine photo