Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Flower Quotations

How like they are to human things!

These stars of earth, these golden flowers.

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, And, with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between.

All things are symbols: the external shows Of Nature have their image in the mind , As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves.

O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet.

Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.

We waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into potions which, after all, do not immortalize, but only intoxicate.

Love is a bodily shape; and Christian works are no more than animate faith and love, as flowers are the animate springtide.

Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.

Many people do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.

Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?

An angel visited the green earth, and took a flower away.

Our blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are bright and full of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.

Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers.

Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.