Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream,
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem. [ Longfellow ]
And like some low and mournful spell.
To whisper out the word, Farewell. [ Park Benjamin ]
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's over the plain;
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown. [ Byron ]
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play! [ Whittier ]
Dashing in big drops on the narrow pane,
And making mournful music for the mind,
While plays his interlude the wizzard wind,
I hear the singing of the frequent rain. [ William H. Burleigh ]
The charm of eloquence - the skill
To wake each secret string,
And from the bosom's chords at will
Life's mournful music bring;
The overmastering strength of mind, which sways
The haughty and the free,
Whose might earth's mightiest ones obey
This charm was given to thee. [ Mrs. Embury ]
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys.
Society, cut off, is left alone
Amid this world of death. Day after day.
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave.
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless. [ Thomson ]
Life is a mournful silence in which the heart ever calls. [ Lamartine ]
Dewdrops are the gems of morning, but the tears of mournful eve. [ Coleridge ]
The leaves of memory seem to make a mournful rustle in the dark. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Death ends our woes, and the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene. [ Dryden ]
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed. Slow rises worth by poverty depressed. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Cold duty's path is not so blithely trod Which leads the mournful spirit to its God. [ William Herbert ]
Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face. [ St. Jerome ]
A man without earnestness is a mournful and perplexing spectacle. But it is a consolation to believe, as we must of such a one, that he is the most effectual and compulsive of all schools. [ Sterling ]