Which makes life itself a lie,

Flattering dust with eternity.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Sardanapalus. Act i. Sc. 2.

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty

Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act v. Sc. 4.

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

So the little minutes, humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages of eternity.

Julia A Fletcher Carney: Little Things, 1845.

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.

Eternity mourns that. 'T is an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.

Where sorrow's held intrusive and turned out,

There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,

Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

Sir Henry Taylor (1800-18—): Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5.

That golden key

That opes the palace of eternity.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 13.

All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

Over his living head like heaven is bent,

An early but enduring monument,

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

In sorrow.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Adonais. xxx.

Great truths are portions of the soul of man;

Great souls are portions of eternity.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): Sonnet vi.

Speak gently! 't is a little thing

Dropp'd in the heart's deep well;

The good, the joy, that it may bring

Eternity shall tell.

G. W. Langford: Speak gently.

I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.

Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,

My bane and antidote, are both before me:

This in a moment brings me to an end;

But this informs me I shall never die.

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act v. Sc. 1.

For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night?

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 146.

But there are wanderers o'er Eternity

Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 70.

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Adonais. lii.