It is to hope, though hope were lost.

Anna Letitia Barbauld (June 20, 1743 – March 9, 1825) was an English poet and miscellaneous writer.

Quotes

  • Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
    In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew—
    Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
    They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.
    • Poems (1773), "To a Lady, with some painted Flowers", p. 96.
  • I read his awful name, emblazon'd high
    With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky.
    • Poems (1773), "An Address to the Deity", p. 128.
  • Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?
    • Hymns in Prose for Children, Hymn 10 (1781).
  • Life! we've been long together
    Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
    Tis hard to part when friends are dear,—
    Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear.
    Then steal away, give little warning.
    Choose thine own time,
    Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime,
    Bid me "Good-morning."
  • Come calm content serene and sweet,
    O gently guide my pilgrim feet
    To find thy hermit cell.
    • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 161.
  • With Thee in shady solitudes I walk,
    With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk;
    In every creature own Thy forming power,
    In each event Thy providence adore.
    • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 433.

The Mouse's Petition (1773)

Dedicated to Joseph Priestley - Full text at Wikisource
  • OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
    For liberty that sighs;
    And never let thine heart be shut
    Against the prisoner's cries.
  • If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
    And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
    Let not thy strong oppressive force
    A free-born mouse detain.
  • The chearful light, the vital air,
    Are blessings widely given;
    Let nature's commoners enjoy
    The common gifts of heaven.
  • The well-taught philosophic mind
    To all compassion gives;
    Casts round the world an equal eye,
    And feels for all that lives.

  • If mind, as ancient sages taught,
    A never dying flame,
    Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
    In every form the same,

    Beware, lest in the worm you crush
    A brother's soul you find;
    And tremble lest thy luckless hand
    Dislodge a kindred mind.

  • So when unseen destruction lurks,
    Which men like mice may share,
    May some kind angel clear thy path,
    And break the hidden snare.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Quotes reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
    And souls are ripened in our northern sky.
    • The Invitation.
  • This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
    And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
    • A Summer's Evening Meditation.
  • It is to hope, though hope were lost.
    • Come here, Fond Youth. Compare: "Who against hope believed in hope", Romans iv, 18; "Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive", James Montgomery, The World before the Flood.
  • So fades a summer cloud away;
    So sinks the gale when storms are o’er;
    So gently shuts the eye of day;
    So dies a wave along the shore.
    • The Death of the Virtuous. Compare: "The daisie, or els the eye of the day", Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue of the Legend of Good Women, line 183.
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