1.
Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
2.
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?
Edmund Clarence Stedman
3.
A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
4.
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!
Edmund Clarence Stedman
5.
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?
Edmund Clarence Stedman
6.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
7.
Music waves eternal wands,--
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!
Edmund Clarence Stedman
8.
Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
9.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
10.
Men are egotists, and not all tolerant of one man's selfhood; they do not always deem the amities elective.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
11.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
12.
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!
Edmund Clarence Stedman
13.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
14.
Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
15.
Worth, courage, honor, these indeed
Your sustenance and birthright are.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
16.
Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
17.
Yes, there's a luck in most things; and in none more than being born at the right time.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
18.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
19.
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?
Edmund Clarence Stedman
20.
O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!
O Earth's betrothal, sweet and true!
Edmund Clarence Stedman
21.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
22.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
23.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
24.
A poet must sing for his own people.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
25.
The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
26.
The imagination never dies.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
27.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
28.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
29.
The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
30.
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
31.
Alas, by what rude fate Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet, Then part forever on their courses fleet.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
32.
Science has but one fashion-to lose nothing once gained.
Edmund Clarence Stedman