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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Morning

Rise, happy morn! rise, holy morn!

Tennyson.

The eye of day hath oped its lids.

Shakespeare.

The early morning has gold in its mouth.

Franklin.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn.

Gray.

O word and thing most beautiful!

Susan Coolidge.

When rosy morning glimmered o’er the dales.

Pope.

The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of dews.

Thomson.

Under the opening eyelids of the morn.

Milton.

Yon gray lines that fret the clouds are messengers of day.

Shakespeare.

The dewy morn, with breath all incense and with cheek all bloom.

Byron.

  • Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,
  • With charm of earliest birds.
  • Milton.

    Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-top.

    Shakespeare.

    The morrow, fair with purple beams, dispersed the shadows of the misty night.

    Spenser.

  • Morn in the white wake of the morning star
  • Came furrowing all the orient into gold.
  • Tennyson.

    Sweet as dew-drops on the flowery lawns when the sky opens, and the morning dawns.

    Tickell.

    Morn, waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand unbarred the gates of light.

    Milton.

    When the glad sun, exulting in his might, comes from the dusky-curtained tents of night.

    Emma C. Embury.

    The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat wake the god of day.

    Shakespeare.

  • Mornings are mysteries; the first world’s youth,
  • Man’s resurrection, and the future’s bud
  • Shroud in their births.
  • Henry Vaughan.

    Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation, for sleep itself is recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauces.

    Fuller.

  • Bright as does the morning star appear,
  • Out of the east with flaming locks bedight,
  • To tell the dawning day is drawing near.
  • Spenser.

    Darkness is fled. Now flowers unfold their beauties to the sun, and blushing kiss the beam he sends to wake them.

    Sheridan.

    Behold the morning! Rise up, O youth, and quickly fill thyself with this rosy wine sparkling from the crystal cup of the dawn!

    Omar Khayyám.

    Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds.

    Calderon.

    For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, and yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; at whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to churchyards.

    Shakespeare.

    So, on the eastern summit, clad in gray, morn, like a horseman girt for travel, comes, and from his tower of mist night’s watchman hurries down.

    H. K. White.

  • Mighty Nature bounds as from her birth,
  • The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth;
  • Flowers in the valley, splendor in the beam,
  • Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.
  • Byron.

    Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.

    Beecher.

  • Now the bright Morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
  • Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
  • The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws
  • The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
  • Milton.

  • Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
  • Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
  • The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
  • Kisses the blushing leaf.
  • Longfellow.

  • But now the clouds in airy tumult fly;
  • The sun, emerging, opes an azure sky;
  • A fresher green the smiling leaves display,
  • And glittering as they tremble, cheer the day.
  • Parnell.

    I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin’s love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

  • The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
  • With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
  • Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
  • And living as if earth contain’d no tomb,—
  • And glowing into day.
  • Byron.

  • The rosy-fingered morn did there disclose
  • Her beauty, ruddy as a blushing bride,
  • Gilding the marigold, painting the rose,
  • With Indian chrysolites her cheeks were dy’d.
  • Baron.

    Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?

    Alcott.

  • O how beautiful is morning!
  • How the sunbeams strike the daisies
  • And the kingcups fill the meadow
  • Like a golden-shielded army
  • Marching to the uplands fair.
  • D. M. Mulock.

    At the morning hour, when the half-awakened sun, trampling down the lingering shadows of the west, spreads his ruby-tinted tresses over jessamines and roses, drying with cloths of gold Aurora’s tears of mingled fire and snow, which the sun’s rays converted into pearls.

    Calderon.

  • The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
  • Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
  • And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
  • From forth day’s path, and Titan’s fiery wheels.
  • Shakespeare.

    Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the morning and spring of your life are past.

    Thoreau.

  • At last the golden oriental gate
  • Of greatest heaven ’gan to open fair;
  • And Phœbus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,
  • Came dancing forth shaking his dewy hair,
  • And hurl’d his glist’ring beams through gloomy air.
  • Spenser.

  • Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
  • From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
  • And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
  • The sun ariseth in his majesty;
  • Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
  • That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.
  • Shakespeare.

    Let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.

    Jeremy Taylor.

    I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.

    Emerson.

  • The eastern hanging crescent climbeth higher;
  • See, purple on the azure softly steals,
  • And Morning, faintly touched with quivering fire,
  • Leans on the frosty summits of the hills,
  • Like a young girl over her hoary sire.
  • Roscoe.

  • Full many a glorious morning have I seen
  • Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
  • Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
  • Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
  • Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
  • With ugly rack on his celestial face,
  • And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
  • Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
  • Shakespeare.

  • What various scenes, and O! what scenes of Woe,
  • Are witness’d by that red and struggling beam!
  • The fever’d patient, from his pallet low,
  • Through crowded hospitals beholds it stream;
  • The ruined maiden trembles at its gleam,
  • The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and jail,
  • The love-lorn wretch starts from tormenting dream;
  • The wakeful mother, by the glimmering pale,
  • Trims her sick infant’s couch, and soothes his feeble wail.
  • Scott.

  • Day!
  • Faster and more fast,
  • O’er night’s brim, day boils at last;
  • Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim
  • Where spurting and suppress’d it lay—
  • For not a froth-flake touched the rim
  • Of yonder gap in the solid gray
  • Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
  • But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
  • Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest,
  • Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
  • Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
  • Robert Browning.