We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! And then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam,
To meet no more.
Quotations by:
Smith, Alexander
To our graves we walk
In the thick footprints of departed men.
A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles on the road.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
“Men of Letters”
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
“The Fear of Dying” (1857)
Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
“The Fear of Dying” (1857)
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds
In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.
Men hold the anniversaries of their birth, of their marriage, of the birth of their first-born, and they hold — although they spread no feast, and ask no friends to assist — many another anniversary besides. On many a day in every year does a man remember what took place on that self-same day in some former year, and chews the sweet or bitter herb of memory, as the case may be.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
Dreamthorp (1863)
Good humor and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
Dreamthorp, ch. 12 (1863)
Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.
Alexander Smith (1830-1867) Scottish poet
Essay (1863), “Of Death and the Fear of Dying”, Dreamthorp
(Source)