heaven (n.)
- acme
- air
- apex
- apogee
- azure
- beatification
- beatitude
- bewitchment
- blessedness
- bliss
- blissfulness
- brow
- caelum
- canopy
- cap
- cerulean
- cheer
- cheerfulness
- climax
- contentment
- cope
- crest
- crown
- culmination
- delectation
- delight
- dreamland
- dystopia
- ecstasy
- edge
- elation
- elevation
- elysium
- eminence
- empyrean
- enchantment
- ether
- exaltation
- exhilaration
- extremity
- exuberance
- faerie
- fairyland
- felicity
- firmament
- gaiety
- gladness
- glee
- happiness
- heavens
- height
- heights
- hereafter
- heyday
- hyaline
- intoxication
- joy
- joyfulness
- kingdom
- lift
- limit
- maximum
- meridian
- millennium
- nirvana
- noon
- paradise
- peak
- pinnacle
- pitch
- point
- pole
- prosperity
- raise
- rapture
- ravishment
- ridge
- rise
- sky
- spire
- steep
- stratosphere
- summit
- sunshine
- tip
- top
- transport
- utmost
- utopia
- vault
- vertex
- welkin
- wonderland
- zenith
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
All places are distant from heaven alike.
O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer's day.
Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage,—the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.
'T is heaven alone that is given away;
'T is only God may be had for the asking.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
She what was honour knew,
And with obsequious majesty approv'd
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower
I led her blushing like the morn; all heaven
And happy constellations on that hour
Shed their selectest influence; the earth
Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill;
Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs
Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings
Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub.
Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!
Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us,
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to Heaven.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.
I have been there, and still would go;
'T is like a little heaven below.
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, or speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;
The breath of heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost.
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Now let us thank the Eternal Power: convinced
That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction,—
That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour
Serves but to brighten all our future days.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.
While Resignation gently slopes away,
And all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come.
So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day.
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.
As sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Far from mortal cares retreating,
Sordid hopes and vain desires,
Here, our willing footsteps meeting,
Every heart to heaven aspires.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.
Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew,
She sparkled, was exhal'd and went to heaven.
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 't is little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
'T is a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd.
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd
In vision beatific.
The strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid.
Hail holy light! offspring of heav'n first-born.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
To be resign'd when ills betide,
Patient when favours are deni'd,
And pleas'd with favours given,—
Dear Chloe, this is wisdom's part;
This is that incense of the heart
Whose fragrance smells to heaven.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state.
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
. . . . .
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
. . . . .
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
From yon blue heaven above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to mis'ry (all he had) a tear,
He gained from Heav'n ('t was all he wish'd) a friend.
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of Earth's bitter leaven
Effaced forever.
With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change,—all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful ev'ning mild, nor silent night
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Heaven gives its favourites—early death.
Swinish gluttony
Ne'er looks to heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast,
But with besotted base ingratitude
Crams, and blasphemes his feeder.
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
God's in his heaven:
All's right with the world.
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science, fairly worth the seven.
Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer:
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
Her angels face,
As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore, in faith, 't was strange, 't was passing strange.
'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful;
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That Heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used.
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die?
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
O Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.
O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to mis'ry (all he had) a tear,
He gained from Heav'n ('t was all he wish'd) a friend.
Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
A high hope for a low heaven.
Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question'd me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it:
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline.
He gave his honours to the world again,
His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
There's husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out.
Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
Hell threatens.
Satan; so call him now, his former name
Is heard no more in heaven.
In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Heaven is not always angry when he strikes,
But most chastises those whom most he likes.
March to the battle-field,
The foe is now before us;
Each heart is Freedom's shield,
And heaven is shining o'er us.
And is there care in Heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these Creatures bace?
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
It were a journey like the path to heaven,
To help you find them.
Love divine, all love excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down.
Divine Love.
Of right and wrong he taught
Truths as refined as ever Athens heard;
And (strange to tell!) he practised what he preached.
Just are the ways of Heaven: from Heaven proceed
The woes of man; Heaven doom'd the Greeks to bleed,—
A theme of future song!
Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.
Just men, by whom impartial laws were given;
And saints who taught and led the way to heaven.
Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than heaven.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
Misled by fancy's meteor ray,
By passion driven;
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.
She was a form of life and light
That seen, became a part of sight,
And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The morning-star of memory!
Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Dispel this cloud, the light of Heaven restore;
Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.
Moderation, the noblest gift of Heaven.
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder.
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,—
To which I leave him.
This world is all a fleeting show,
For man's illusion given;
The smiles of joy, the tears of woe,
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,—
There's nothing true but Heaven.
A heaven of charms divine Nausicaa lay.
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
Hail holy light! offspring of heav'n first-born.
A heaven on earth.
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,
And multiply each through endless years,—
One minute of heaven is worth them all.
Heaven open'd wide
Her ever during gates, harmonious sound,
On golden hinges moving.
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.
The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
It were a journey like the path to heaven,
To help you find them.
Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
Live well: how long or short permit to heaven.
A Persian's heaven is eas'ly made:
'T is but black eyes and lemonade.
Heaven hears and pities hapless men like me,
For sacred ev'n to gods is misery.
When all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
It must be so,—Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'T is the divinity that stirs within us;
'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
Prayer ardent opens heaven.
The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileg'd beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to mis'ry (all he had) a tear,
He gained from Heav'n ('t was all he wish'd) a friend.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to Heaven.
'T is greatly wise to talk with our past hours,
And ask them what report they bore to heaven.
Know from the bounteous heaven all riches flow;
And what man gives, the gods by man bestow.
Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
Is this the great poet whose works so content us?
This Goldsmith's fine feast, who has written fine books?
Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks?
So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.
Thus, when the lamp that lighted
The traveller at first goes out,
He feels awhile benighted,
And looks around in fear and doubt.
But soon, the prospect clearing,
By cloudless starlight on he treads,
And thinks no lamp so cheering
As that light which Heaven sheds.
Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven."
A youth to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven.
Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven,
Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest.
A soul as white as heaven.
Earth sounds my wisdom and high heaven my fame.
Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven."
The starry cope
Of heaven.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
In man's most dark extremity
Oft succour dawns from Heaven.
The life of the husbandman,—a life fed by the bounty of earth and sweetened by the airs of heaven.
'T is immortality to die aspiring,
As if a man were taken quick to heaven.
The selfsame heaven
That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head!
Our author, for the advantage of this play ("Appius and Virginia"), had invented a new species of thunder, which was approved of by the actors, and is the very sort that at present is used in the theatre. The tragedy however was coldly received, notwithstanding such assistance, and was acted but a short time. Some nights after, Mr. Dennis, being in the pit at the representation of "Macbeth," heard his own thunder made use of; upon which he rose in a violent passion, and exclaimed, with an oath, that it was his thunder. "See," said he, "how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!"—Biographia Britannica, vol. v. p. 103.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
'T was whisper'd in heaven, 't was mutter'd in hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;
On the confines of earth 't was permitted to rest,
And the depths of the ocean its presence confess'd.
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head!
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
Humility, that low, sweet root
From which all heavenly virtues shoot.
'T is expectation makes a blessing dear;
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.
In the morning of the world,
When earth was nigher heaven than now.
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.
Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.
Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!
Atossa, cursed with every granted prayer,
Childless with all her children, wants an heir;
To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store,
Or wanders heaven-directed to the poor.
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source,
The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,—
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
