quote · Legacy record
I’ve thought of all this pride, and all this pain, And all the insolent plenitudes of power, And I declare, by this most quiet hour, Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light She, and my friends here, this delightful night, That power itself has not one half the might Of Gentleness. ’Tis want to all true wealth; The uneasy madman’s force, to the wise health; Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see; Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty; The consciousness of strength in enemies, Who must be strain’d upon or else they rise; The battle to the moon, who all the while, High out of hearing, passes with her smile: The tempest, trampled in his scanty run, To the whole globe, that basks about the sun; Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere, Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear, Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps Throughout her starry deeps, Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken, Which tells a tale of peace beyond whate’er was spoken.
I’ve thought of all this pride, and all this pain, And all the insolent plenitudes of power, And I declare, by this most quiet hour, Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light She, and my friends here, this delightful night, That power itself has not one half the might Of Gentleness. ’Tis want to all true wealth; The uneasy madman’s force, to the wise health; Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see; Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty; The consciousness of strength in enemies, Who must be strain’d upon or else they rise; The battle to the moon, who all the while, High out of hearing, passes with her smile: The tempest, trampled in his scanty run, To the whole globe, that basks about the sun; Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere, Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear, Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps Throughout her starry deeps, Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken, Which tells a tale of peace beyond whate’er was spoken.
Approximate author period: c. 1821 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Leigh Hunt
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1821 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1784–1859)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations (catalogued1888) (1888 AD)
Page 247 · printed citation: Leigh Hunt · subject: GENTLENESS
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