Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 – December 19, 1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat.
We follow and race In shifting chase, Over the boundless ocean-space! Who hath beheld when the race begun? Who shall behold it run?
The loving are the daring.
The source of each accordant strain Lies deeper than the Poet's brain. First from the people's heart must spring The passions which he learns to sing; They are the wind, the harp is he, To voice their fitful melody,-- The language of their varying fate, Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,-- The talisman which holds inwrought The touchstone of the listener's thought; That penetrates each vain disguise, And brings his secret to his eyes.
From the desert I come to thee, On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire.
Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows - the south and east oriels - are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.
The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one, In the slow process of the doubtful years.
It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.
The hollows are heavy and dank With the steam of the Goldenrods.
There may come a day Which crowns Desire with gift, and Art with truth, And Love with bliss, and Life with wiser youth!
Could one live on the sense of beauty alone, exempt from the necessity of 'creature comforts,' a sea-voyage would be delightful.
Pens carry further than rifled cannon.
Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.
Peace the offspring is of Power.
I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye - high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.
Pansies in soft April rains Fill their stalks with honeyed sap Drawn from Earth's prolific lap.
Alone each heart must cover up its dead; Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.
With rushing winds and gloomy skies The dark and stubborn Winter dies: Far-off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, Bidding her earliest child arise; March!
London has the advantage of one of the most gloomy atmospheres in the world.
And far and wide, in a scarlet tide, The poppy's bonfire spread.
Life lives only in success.