Edmund Clarence Stedman Quotes

Edmund Clarence Stedman writes lyrical, wistful musings on adventure, loss, and mortality.

15 quotes

  1. I dare aver He is a brave discoverer Of climes his elders do not know. He has more learning than appears On the scroll of twice three thousand years.

  2. Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land, Slipped from my hold-thus plenty comes and goes. One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand (Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.

  3. Give me to die unwitting of the day, And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear!

  4. Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away? The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky Thou still canst find the color of thy wing, The hue of May. Warbler, why speed, thy southern flight? ah, why, Thou, too, whose song first told us of the Spring? Whither away?

  5. No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream, Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hillyho! heigh O! Hillyho! In the clear October morning.

  6. The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.

  7. Give us a man of God's own mould Born to marshall his fellow-men; One whose fame is not bought and sold At the stroke of a politician's pen. Give us the man of thousands ten, Fit to do as well as to plan; Give us a rallying-cry, and then Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man.

  8. Lo, as I gaze, the statured man, Built up from you large hand appears: A type that nature wills to plan But once in all a people's years.

  9. Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

  10. Alas, by what rude fate Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet, Then part forever on their courses fleet.

  11. Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.

  12. Music waves eternal wands,-- Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

  13. Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.

  14. Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.

  15. Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was - how large of mould.