Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thomas Bailey Aldrichwas an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He is notable for his long editorship of The Atlantic Monthly, during which he published works by Charles Chesnutt and others. He was also known for his semi-autobiographical book The Story of a Bad Boy, and for his poetry, which included "The Unguarded Gates"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 November 1836
CountryUnited States of America
life age coins
So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!
sleep turns delicate
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
sleep mystery probing
What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
death-penalty murder intolerance
The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
hypocrisy sorrow coins
The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.
suicide thinking blue
So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.
memorial-day land tears
With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.
men boredom speech
The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
civilization skins revolution
Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.
rain wind rivers
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind,-and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
passion men air
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates And through them presses a wild motley throng Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn These bringing with them unknown gods and rites Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws In street and alley what strange tongues are loud Accents of menace alien to our air Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well To leave the gates unguarded?
summer spring fall
What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
voice shadow generations
Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.
sunset sea fire
Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.