“The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book."(Introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London, 3 October 1892)”

“Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over:I only vex you the more I try.All's wrong that ever I've done and said,And nought to help it in this dull head:Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye.But if you come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share,Be good to the lad that loves you trueAnd the soul that was born to die for you,And whistle and I'll be there.”

“The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail.”

“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled,Followed their mercenary callingAnd took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended;They stood, and earth's foundations stay;What God abandoned, these defended,And saved the sum of things for pay.”

“Diffugere NivesHorace, Odes, iv, 7The snows are fled away, leaves on the shawsAnd grasses in the mead renew their birth,The river to the river-bed withdraws,And altered is the fashion of the earth.The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fearAnd unapparelled in the woodland play.The swift hour and the brief prime of the yearSay to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of springTreads summer sure to die, for hard on hersComes autumn with his apples scattering;Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;Come we where Tullus and where Ancus areAnd good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall addThe morrow to the day, what tongue has told?Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has hadThe fingers of no heir will ever hold.When thou descendest once the shades among,The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chainThe love of comrades cannot take away.”

“How clear, how lovely bright,How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play;How heaven laughs out with gleeWhere, like a bird set free,Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day.To-day I shall be strong,No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more;Days lost, I know not how,I shall retrieve them now;Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before.Ensanguining the skiesHow heavily it dies Into the west away;Past touch and sight and soundNot further to be found,How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.”

“Along the field as we came byA year ago, my love and I,The aspen over stile and stoneWas talking to itself alone.'Oh who are these that kiss and pass?A country lover and his lass;Two lovers looking to be wed;And time shall put them both to bed,But she shall lie with earth above,And he beside another love.'And sure enough beneath the treeThere walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heavesIts rainy-sounding silver leaves;And I spell nothing in their stir,But now perhaps they speak to her,And plain for her to understandThey talk about a time at handWhen I shall sleep with clover clad,And she beside another lad.”