Bryan Procter Quotes

Bryan Procter celebrates the open sea with vivid, soaring verses that feel like a breezy adventure.

16 quotes

  1. The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

  2. I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be, With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go.

  3. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more.

  4. Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream Gently,-as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream.

  5. Not the rich viol, trump, cymbal, nor horn, Guitar, nor cittern, nor the pining flute, Are half so sweet as tender human words.

  6. Most writers steal a good thing when they can, and when 'Tis safely got 'Tis worth the winning. The worst of 't is we now and then detect em, they ever dream that we suspect em.

  7. Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years. I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay.

  8. How silent are the winds!

  9. Up and down! Up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown; And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The Stormy Petrel finds a home,-- A home, if such a place may be, For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young and to teach them spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!

  10. Gamaun is a dainty steed, Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of fire, and full of bone, With all his line of fathers known; Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within; His mane is like a river flowing, And his eyes like embers glowing In the darkness of the night, And his pace as swift as light.

  11. Women are so gentle, so affectionate, so true in sorrow, so untired and untiring! but the leaf withers not sooner, and tropic light fades not more abruptly.

  12. The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies.

  13. In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower, The spectral Owl doth dwell; Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour, But at the dusk--he's abroad and well! Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him-- All mock him outright, by day: But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away! O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl, Then, then, is the reign of the Horned Owl!

  14. Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain.

  15. Half the ills we heard within our hearts are ills because we hoard them.

  16. Death is the tyrant of the imagination.