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Black Tragedy Lets Slip Her Grim Disguise And Shows You Laughing Lips And Roguish Eyes; But When, Unmasked, Gay Comedy Appears, How Wan Her Cheeks Are, And What Heavy Tears!

-Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Black Tragedy Lets Slip

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Black Tragedy Lets Slip Her Grim Disguise And Shows You Laughing Lips And Roguish Eyes; But When, Unmasked, Gay Comedy Appears, How Wan Her Cheeks Are, And What Heavy Tears!

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So I Sit There Kicked My Heels, Thinking About New Orleans, And Watching A Morbid Blue-bottle Fly Attempt To Commit Suicide By Butting His Head Against The Windowpane.

The Man Who Suspects His Own Tediousness Is Yet To Be Born.

Turn On Its Noiseless Hinges, Delicate Sleep!

Between The Reputation Of The Author Living And The Reputation Of The Same Author Dead There Is Ever A Wide Discrepancy.

What Is Slang In One Age Sometimes Goes Into The Vocabulary Of The Purist In The Next.

Day Is A Snow-white Dove Of Heaven That From The East Glad Message Brings. Night Is A Stealthy, Evil Raven, Wrapped To The Eyes In His Black Wings.

Gracious To All, To None Subservient, Without Offense He Spoke The Word He Meant

The Walking Delegates Of A Higher Civilization, Who Have Nothing To Divide, Look Upon The Notion Of Property As A Purely Artificial Creation Of Human Society. According To These Advanced Philosophers, The Time Will Come When No Man Shall Be Allowed To Call Anything His. The Beneficent Law Which Takes Away An Author's Rights In His Own Books Just At The Period When Old Age Is Creeping Upon Him Seems To Me A Handsome Stride Toward The Longed-for Millennium.

Sorrow Itself Is Not So Hard To Bear As The Thought Of Sorrow Coming. Airy Ghosts, That Work No Harm, Do Terrify Us More Than Men In Steel With Bloody Purposes. Death Is Not Dreadful; 'tis The Dread Of Death— We Die Whene'er We Think Of It!

The Fate Of The Worm Refutes The Pretended Ethical Teaching Of The Proverb, Which Assumes To Illustrate The Advantage Of Early Rising And Does So By Showing How Extremely Dangerous It Is.

O Harp Of Life, So Speedily Unstrung!

It Is The Lord's Day, And I Do Believe That Cheerful Hearts And Faces Are Not Unpleasant In His Sight.

What Is Lovely Never Dies, But Passes Into Other Loveliness, Star-dust, Or Sea-foam, Flower Or Winged Air.

Imagine All Human Beings Swept Off The Face Of The Earth, Excepting One Man. Imagine This Man In Some Vast City, New York Or London. Imagine Him On The Third Or Fourth Day Of His Solitude Sitting In A House And Hearing A Ring At The Door-bell!

A Glance, A Word -- And Joy Or Pain Befalls.... How Slight The Links Are In The Chain That Binds Us To Our Destiny!

Chains That Bind

O Liberty...! Is It Well To Leave The Gates Unguarded?

Come Watch With Me The Shaft Of Fire That Glows In Yonder West; The Fair, Frail Palaces, The Fading Alps And Archipelagoes And Great Cloud Continents Of Sunset-seas.

This One Sits Shivering In Fortune's Smile, Taking His Joy With Bated, Doubtful Breath. This Other, Gnawed By Hunger, All The While Laughs In The Teeth Of Death.

My Mind Lets Go A Thousand Things, Like Dates Of Wars And Deaths Of Kings

My Father Invested His Money So Securely In The Banking Business That He Was Never Able To Get Any Of It Out Again.

I Beg You Come Tonight And Dine A Welcome Waits You And Sound Wine The Roederer Chilly To A Charm As Juno's Breasts The Claret Warm.

We Weep When We Are Born, Not When We Die!

October Turned My Maple's Leaves To Gold; The Most Are Gone Now; Here And There One Lingers: Soon These Will Slip From The Twigs' Weak Hold, Like Coins Between A Dying Miser's Fingers.

Dialect Tempered With Slang Is An Admirable Medium Of Communication Between Persons Who Have Nothing To Say And Persons Who Would Not Care For Anything Properly Said.

It Is Only Your Habitual Late Riser Who Takes In The Full Flavor Of Nature At Those Rare Intervals When He Gets Up To Go Afishing. He Brings Virginal Emotions And Unsatiated Eyes To The Sparkling Freshness Of Earth And Stream And Sky.

It Was Pleasant To Me To Get A Letter From You The Other Day. Perhaps I Should Have Found It Pleasanter If I Had Been Able To Decipher It. I Don't Think That I Mastered Anything Beyond The Date (which I Knew) And The Signature (which I Guessed At). There's A Singular And A Perpetual Charm In A Letter Of Yours; It Never Grows Old, It Never Loses Its Novelty. Other Letters Are Read And Thrown Away And Forgotten, But Yours Are Kept Forever - Unread. One Of Them Will Last A Reasonable Man A Lifetime.

It Were Better To Be A Soldier's Widow Than A Coward's Wife.

We Knew It Would Rain, For The Poplars Showed The White Of Their Leaves, The Amber Grain Shrunk In The Wind,-and The Lightning Now Is Tangled In Tremulous Skeins Of Rain.

With The Tears A Land Hath Shed. Their Graves Should Ever Be Green.

After A Debauch Of Thunder-shower, The Weather Takes The Pledge And Signs It With A Rainbow.

Everyone Has A Bookplate These Days, And The Collectors Are After It. The Fool And His Bookplate Are Soon Parted. To Distribute One's Ex Libris Is Inanely To Destroy The Only Significance It Has, That Of Indicating The Past Or Present Ownership Of The Volume In Which It Is Placed.

No Bird Has Ever Uttered Note That Was Not In Some First Bird's Throat; Since Eden's Freshness And Man's Fall No Rose Has Been Original.

Hebe's Here, May Is Here! The Air Is Fresh And Sunny; And The Miser-bees Are Busy Hoarding Golden Honey.

I Like Not Lady-slippers, Nor Yet The Sweet-pea Blossoms, Nor Yet The Flaky Roses, Red Or White As Snow; I Like The Chaliced Lilies, The Heavy Eastern Lilies, The Gorgeous Tiger-lilies, That In Our Garden Grow.

All The Best Sands Of My Life Are Somehow Getting Into The Wrong End Of The Hourglass. If I Could Only Reverse It! Were It In My Power To Do Sowould I?

The Thing One Reads And Likes, And Then Forgets, Is Of No Account. The Thing That Stays, And Haunts One, And Refuses To Be Forgotten, That Is The Sincere Thing.

The Ocean Moans Over Dead Men's Bones.

To Keep The Heart Unwrinkled, To Be Hopeful, Kindly, Cheerful, Reverent That Is To Triumph Over Old Age.

They Fail, And They Alone, Who Have Not Striven.

What Is More Cheerful, Now, In The Fall Of The Year, Than An Open-wood-fire? Do You Hear Those Little Chirps And Twitters Coming Out Of That Piece Of Apple-wood? Those Are The Ghosts Of The Robins And Blue-birds That Sang Upon The Bough When It Was In Blossom Last Spring. In Summer Whole Flocks Of Them Come Fluttering About The Fruit-trees Under The Window: So I Have Singing Birds All The Year Round.

The Ability To Have Our Own Way, And At The Same Time Convince Others They Are Having Their Own Way, Is A Rare Thing Among Men. Among Women It Is As Common As Eyebrows.

Wide Open And Unguarded Stand Our Gates, And Through Them Presses A Wild Motley Throng, Men From The Volga And The Tartar Steppes, Featureless Figures Of The Hoang-ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, And Slav. Flying The Old World's Poverty And Scorn, These Bringing With Them Unknown Gods And Rites, Ttose, Tiger Passions, Here To Stretch Their Claws In Street And Alley. What Strange Tongues Are Loud Accents Of Menace Alien To Our Air, Voices That Once The Tower Of Babel Knew! O Liberty, White Goddess! Is It Well To Leave The Gates Unguarded?

A Man Is Known By The Company His Mind Keeps.

Decoration Day Is The Most Beautiful Of Our National Holidays.... The Grim Cannon Have Turned Into Palm Branches, And The Shell And Shrapnel Into Peach Blossoms.

Great Orators Who Are Not Also Great Writers Become Very Indistinct Shadows To The Generations Following Them. The Spell Vanishes With The Voice.

Great Thoughts In Crude, Unshapely Verse Set Forth Lose Half Their Preciousness, And Ever Must, Unless The Diamond With Its Own Rich Dust Be Cut And Polished, It Seems Little Worth.

Those Forms We Fancy Shadows, Those Strange Lights That Flash On Dank Morasses, The Quick Wind That Smites Us By The Roadside—are The Night's Innumerable Children. Unconfined By Shroud Or Coffin, Disembodied Souls, Uneasy Spirits, Steal Into The Air From Festering Graveyards When The Curfew Tolls At The Day's Death... And Wheresoever Murders Have Been Done, In Stately Palaces Or Lonesome Woods, Where'er A Soul Has Sold Itself And Lost Its High Inheritance, There, Hovering, Broods Some Sad, Invisible, Accurséd Ghost!

I Like To Have A Thing Suggested Rather Than Told In Full. When Every Detail Is Given, The Mind Rests Satisfied, And The Imagination Loses The Desire To Use Its Own Wings.

What Is A Day To An Immortal Soul! A Breath, No More.

The Possession Of Gold Has Ruined Fewer Men Than The Lack Of It. What Noble Enterprises Have Been Checked And What Fine Souls Have Been Blighted In The Gloom Of Poverty The World Will Never Know.

O Liberty, White Goddess! Is It Well To Leave The Gates Unguarded? On Thy Breast Fold Sorrow's Children, Soothe The Hurts Of Fate, Lift The Down-trodden, But With Hand Of Steel Stay Those Who To Thy Sacred Portals Come To Waste The Gifts Of Freedom.

The Young Girl In My Story Is To Be As Sensitive To Praise As A Prism Is To Light. Whenever Anybody Praises Her She Breaks Into Colors.

When Friends Are At Your Hearthside Met, Sweet Courtesy Has Done Its Most If You Have Made Each Guest Forget That He Himself Is Not The Host.

Black Tragedy Lets Slip Her Grim Disguise And Shows You Laughing Lips And Roguish Eyes; But When, Unmasked, Gay Comedy Appears, How Wan Her Cheeks Are, And What Heavy Tears!

The Possession Of Gold Has Ruined Fewer Men Than The Lack Of It.

So Precious Life Is! Even To The Old, The Hours Are As A Miser's Coins!

Though I Be Shut In Darkness, And Become Insentient Dust Blown Idly Here And There, I Count Oblivion A Scant Price To Pay For Having Once Had Held Against My Lip Life's Brimming Cup Of Hydromel And Rue--for Having Once Known Woman's Holy Love And A Child's Kiss, And For A Little Space Been Boon Companion To The Day And Night, Fed On The Odors Of The Summer Dawn, And Folded In The Beauty Of The Stars. Dear Lord, Though I Be Changed To Senseless Clay, And Serve The Potter As He Turns His Wheel, I Thank Thee For The Gracious Gift Of Tears!

The Laurels Of An Orator Who Is Not A Master Of Literary Art Wither Quickly.

The Possession Of Unlimited Power Will Make A Despot Of Almost Any Man. There Is A Possible Nero In The Gentlest Human Creature That Walks.

That Was Indeed To Live -- At One Bold Swoop To Wrest From Darkling Death The Best That Death To Life Can Give.

True Art Selects And Paraphrases, But Seldom Gives A Verbatim Translation.

What Probing Deep Has Ever Solved The Mystery Of Sleep?

The Ring Of A False Coin Is Not More Recognizable Than That Of A Rhyme Setting Forth A False Sorrow.

How Fugitive And Brief Is Mortal Life Between The Budding And The Falling Leaf.

But I, In The Chilling Twilight Stand And Wait At The Portcullis, At Thy Castle Gate, Longing To See The Charmed Door Of Dreams Turn On Its Noiseless Hinges, Delicate Sleep!

Books That Have Become Classics - Books That Have Had Their Day And Now Get More Praise Than Perusal - Always Remind Me Of Retired Colonels And Majors And Captains Who, Having Reached The Age Limit, Find Themselves Retired On Half Pay.

At The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century Barbarism Can Throw Off Its Gentle Disguise, And Burn A Man At The Stake As Complacently As In The Middle Ages.

Up From The Dark The Moon Begins To Creep; And Now A Pallid, Haggard Face Lifts She Above The Water-line: Thus From The Deep A Drowned Body Rises Solemnly.

Shakespeare Is Forever Coming Into Our Affairs -- Putting In His Oar, So To Speak -- With Some Pat Word Or Sentence.

Civilization Is The Lamb's Skin In Which Barbarism Masquerades.

The Fanatic Has The Courage Of His Conviction And The Intolerance Of His Courage. He Is Opposed To The Death Penalty For Murder, But He Would Willingly Have Anyone Electrocuted Who Disagreed With Him On The Subject.

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