William Cullen Bryant Might Quotations

Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

These struggling tides of life that seemIn wayward, aimless course to tend,Are eddies of the mighty streamThat rolls to its appointed end.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness -- a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion. The mind grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty ingredients, grows, by certain necessity, to their stature. Scarce anything so convinces me of the capacity of the human intellect for indefinite expansion in the different stages of its being, as this power of enlarging itself to the compass of surrounding emergencies.

But if, around my place of sleep,The friends I love should come to weep,They might not haste to go.Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloomShould keep them lingering by my tomb.

Oh mother of a mighty race,Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!The elder dames, thy haughty peers,Admire and hate thy blooming years.