Alexander Smith

Alexander Smith (31 December 1829 – 5 January 1867) was a Scottish poet, and labelled as one of the Spasmodic School.

Quotes

• 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.
  • Unrest and Childhood.

• The soul of man is like the rolling world,
  One half in day, the other dipt in night;
  The one has music and the flying cloud,
  The other, silence and the wakeful stars.
  • Horton.

• Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.
  • Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863).

• The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
  • Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863).

A Life Drama and other Poems (1853)

• Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.
  • Scene 2.

• In winter, when the dismal rain
  Comes down in slanting lines,
  And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
  His thunder-harp of pines.
  • Scene 2.

• A poem round and perfect as a star.
  • Scene 2.

• Some books are drenchèd sands
  On which a great soul’s wealth lies all in heaps,
  Like a wrecked argosy.
  • Scene 2.

• The saddest thing that befalls a soul
  Is when it loses faith in God and woman.
  • Scene 12.

• 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.
  • Part iv.

City Poems (1857)

• Each time we love,
  We turn a nearer and a broader mark
  To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.
  • "A Boy’s Dream".

• Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
  • "The Fear of Dying".

• Everything is sweetened by risk.
  • "The Fear of Dying".

• 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.
  • "The Fear of Dying".

External links

• Dreamthorp: Essays Written In The Country at Project Gutenberg
• A Summer in Skye: full book available online.
• Essays by Alexander Smith at Quotidiana.org

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