Edmund Clarence Stedman Quotations

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

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

Yes, there's a luck in most things; and in none more than being born at the right time.

No, he was no such charlatan-- Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-Pan-- Full of gasconade and bravado, But a regular, rich Don Rataplane, Santa Claus de la Muscavado, Senor Grandissimo Bastinado! His was the rental of half Havana And all Matanzas; and Santa Ana, Rich as he was, could hardly hold A candle to light the mines of gold Our Cuban owned.

Is there a rarer being, Is there a fairer sphere Where the strong are not unseeing, And the harvests are not sere; Where, ere the seasons dwindle They yield their due return; Where the lamps of knowledge kindle While the flames of youth still burn?

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.

Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale Is wild within me! what may quell That sullen tempest? I must sail Whither, O whither, who can tell!

A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.

The critic's first labor is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

The imagination never dies.

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

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.

War! war! war! Heaven aid the right! God move the hero's arm in the fearful fight! God send the women sleep in the long, long night, When the breasts on whose strength they leaned shall heave no more.

The weary August days are long; The locusts sing a plaintive song, The cattle miss their master's call When they see the sunset shadows fall.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life! O Earth's betrothal, sweet and true!

Above the clouds I lift my wing To hear the bells of Heaven ring; Some of their music, though my fights be wild, To Earth I bring; Then let me soar and sing!

But every human path leads on to God; He holds a myriad finer threads than gold, And strong as holy wishes, drawing us With delicate tension upward to Himself.

Worth, courage, honor, these indeed Your sustenance and birthright are.

Science has but one fashion-to lose nothing once gained.

Do your heart and head keep pace? When does hoary Love expire, When do frosts put out the fire? Can its embers burn below All that chill December snow?

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?

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

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

Men are egotists, and not all tolerant of one man's selfhood; they do not always deem the amities elective.

Progress comes by experiment, and this from ennui that leads to voyages, wars, revolutions, and plainly to change in the arts of expression; that cries out to the imagination, and is the nurse of the invention whereof we term necessity the mother.

The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.

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

A poet must sing for his own people.

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.

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.

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.

Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.