Careful Words

light (n.)

light (v.)

light (adv.)

light (adj.)

Here comes the lady! O, so light a foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 6.

It sounds like stories from the land of spirits

If any man obtains that which he merits,

Or any merit that which he obtains.

  .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!

Hath he not always treasures, always friends,

The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,

And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;

And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Complaint. Ed. 1852. The Good Great Man. Ed. 1893.

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste?

John Milton (1608-1674): To Mr. Lawrence.

  The men of England,—the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 365.

The golden hours on angel wings

Flew o'er me and my dearie;

For dear to me as light and life

Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Highland Mary.

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act iii. Sc. 3.

Her feet beneath her petticoat

Like little mice stole in and out,

As if they feared the light;

But oh, she dances such a way!

No sun upon an Easter-day

Is half so fine a sight.

Sir John Suckling (1609-1641): Ballad upon a Wedding.

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:

The living throne, the sapphire blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw; but blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Progress of Poesy. III. 2, Line 4.

  He was a burning and a shining light.

New Testament: John v. 35.

Virtue could see to do what virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where with her best nurse Contemplation

She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings,

That in the various bustle of resort

Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

He that has light within his own clear breast

May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day;

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts

Benighted walks under the midday sun.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 373.

  The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

New Testament: Luke xvi. 8.

All love is sweet,

Given or returned. Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

 .   .   .   .   .

They who inspire it most are fortunate,

As I am now; but those who feel it most

Are happier still.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Prometheus Unbound. Act ii. Sc. 5.

For I say this is death and the sole death,—

When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,

Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,

And lack of love from love made manifest.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): A Death in the Desert.

Yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 62.

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes;

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Bard. I. 3, Line 12.

Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires,

And unawares Morality expires.

Nor public flame nor private dares to shine;

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd,

Light dies before thy uncreating word;

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,

And universal darkness buries all.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Dunciad. Book iv. Line 649.

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

John Milton (1608-1674): Il Penseroso. Line 159.

  The most perfect soul, says Heraclitus, is a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a cloud.

Plutarch (46(?)-120(?) a d): Life of Romulus.

Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides.

Come and trip it as ye go,

On the light fantastic toe.

John Milton (1608-1674): L'Allegro. Line 31.

Her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3.

Where Washington hath left

His awful memory

A light for after times!

Robert Southey (1774-1843): Ode written during the War with America, 1814.

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.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 1127.

Happy who in his verse can gently steer

From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Art of Poetry. Canto i. Line 75.

Happy who in his verse can gently steer

From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711): The Art of Poetry. Canto i. Line 75.

Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray

Was light from heaven.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): The Vision.

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.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 1127.

  Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'T is good to be merry and wise.

George Chapman (1557-1634): Eastward Ho.[37:5] Act i. Sc. 1.

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,

Adorns and cheers our way;

And still, as darker grows the night,

Emits a brighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Captivity. Act ii.

So his life has flowed

From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,

In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure

Alone are mirrored; which, though shapes of ill

May hover round its surface, glides in light,

And takes no shadow from them.

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854): Ion. Act i. Sc. 1.

Hail holy light! offspring of heav'n first-born.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iii. Line 1.

Oh, leave the gay and festive scenes,

The halls of dazzling light.

H. S. Vandyk (1798-1828): The Light Guitar.

I hate the day, because it lendeth light

To see all things, but not my love to see.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Daphnaida, v. 407.

What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade

Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

Pope: To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,

His eye was dim and cold,

The hairs on his brow were silver-white,

And his blood was thin and old.

Thomas K Hervey (1799-1859): The Devil's Progress.

Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime

Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl,

When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep

Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book v. Line 1.

Nor sink those stars in empty night:

They hide themselves in heaven's own light.

James Montgomery (1771-1854): Friends.

Sparkling and bright in liquid light

Does the wine our goblets gleam in;

With hue as red as the rosy bed

Which a bee would choose to dream in.

Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884): Sparkling and Bright.

  The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

Old Testament: Proverbs iv. 18.

  Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.

Old Testament: Ecclesiastes xi. 7.

A lovely lady, garmented in light

From her own beauty.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): The Witch of Atlas. Stanza 5.

  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Old Testament: Genesis i. 3.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home:

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller (1605-1687): On the Divine Poems.

Ah, when shall all men's good

Be each man's rule, and universal peace

Lie like a shaft of light across the land,

And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,

Thro' all the circle of the golden year?

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Golden Year.

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.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Hebrew Melodies. She walks in Beauty.

As men of inward light are wont

To turn their optics in upon 't.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part iii. Canto i. Line 481.

There swift return

Diurnal, merely to officiate light

Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book viii. Line 21.

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change

Perplexes monarchs.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 597.

The sky is changed,—and such a change! O night

And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,

Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

Leaps the live thunder.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 92.

But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,

As round and round we run;

And the truth shall ever come uppermost,

And justice shall be done.

Charles Mackay (1814-1889): Eternal Justice. Stanza 4.

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908): Light.

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 5.

But thou that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Yarrow Visited.

Dispel this cloud, the light of Heaven restore;

Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book xvii. Line 730.

Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind,

But leave, oh leave the light of Hope behind!

What though my winged hours of bliss have been

Like angel visits, few and far between.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 375.

  They made light of it.

New Testament: Matthew xxii. 5.

The gladsome light of jurisprudence.

Sir Edward Coke (1549-1634): First Institute.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.

The light of love, the purity of grace,

The mind, the music breathing from her face,

The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,—

And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Bride of Abydos. Canto i. Stanza 6.

O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Progress of Poesy. I. 3, Line 16.

She stood breast-high amid the corn

Clasp'd by the golden light of morn,

Like the sweetheart of the sun,

Who many a glowing kiss had won.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): Ruth.

Oft in the stilly night,

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,

Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around me;

The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone

Now dimmed and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Oft in the Stilly Night.

The light of other days is faded,

And all their glories past.

Alfred Bunn (1790-1860): Song.

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,—

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

  The light of the body is the eye.

New Testament: Matthew vi. 22.

This child is not mine as the first was;

I cannot sing it to rest;

I cannot lift it up fatherly,

And bless it upon my breast.

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to

Transfigures its golden hair.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Changeling.

Led by the light of the Maeonian star.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part iii. Line 89.

  We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit!

Daniel Webster (1782-1852): Address on laying the Corner-Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, 1825. P. 62.

  Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

New Testament: Matthew v. 14.

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Tables Turned.

  Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.

Old Testament: Psalm iv. 6.

  Show thy servant the light of thy countenance.

Book Of Common Prayer: The Psalter. Psalm xxxi. 18.

Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give,

And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode to Duty.

Long is the way

And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 432.

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Fancy in Nubibus.

Her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

O woman! in our hours of ease

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Marmion. Canto vi. Stanza 30.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

A remnant of uneasy light.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Matron of Jedborough.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 340.

Fly not yet; 't is just the hour

When pleasure, like the midnight flower

That scorns the eye of vulgar light,

Begins to bloom for sons of night

And maids who love the moon.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Fly not yet.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.

And like a passing thought, she fled

In light away.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): The Vision.

The moon had climb'd the highest hill

Which rises o'er the source of Dee,

And from the eastern summit shed

Her silver light on tower and tree.

John Lowe (1750-1798): Mary's Dream.

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Fancy in Nubibus.

Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn,

Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book viii. Line 1.

You stand in your owne light.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part ii. Chap. iv.

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.

John Keats (1795-1821): Lamia. Part ii.

Yet there was round thee such a dawn

Of light, ne'er seen before,

As fancy never could have drawn,

And never can restore.

Charles Wolfe (1791-1823): To Mary.

  The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Battle of the Books.

How fleet is a glance of the mind!

Compared with the speed of its flight

The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged, arrows of light.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.

Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray

Was light from heaven.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): The Vision.

The light that lies

In woman's eyes.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): The Time I 've lost in wooing.

The light that never was, on sea or land;

The consecration, and the Poet's dream.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm. Stanza 4.

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes;

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Bard. I. 3, Line 12.

And this I know: whether the one True Light

Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite,

One Flash of It within the Tavern caught

Better than in the Temple lost outright.

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131): Rubáiyát. Stanza lxxvii.

  The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

New Testament: John i. 9.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home:

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller (1605-1687): On the Divine Poems.

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.

John Milton (1608-1674): Il Penseroso. Line 79.

A light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode to Duty.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;

I woke, and found that life was Duty.

Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?

Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;

And thou shalt find thy dream to be

A truth and noonday light to thee.

Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1816-1841): Life a Duty.

Morn,

Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand

Unbarr'd the gates of light.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book vi. Line 2.

An unreflected light did never yet

Dazzle the vision feminine.

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

  A lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Old Testament: Psalm cxix. 105.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 598.

  Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

New Testament: John xii. 35.

For 't is a truth well known to most,

That whatsoever thing is lost,

We seek it, ere it come to light,

In every cranny but the right.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Retired Cat.

In that fierce light which beats upon a throne.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): Idylls of the King. Dedication.

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.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): I 'd mourn the Hopes.

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore;

The glory from his gray hairs gone

For evermore!

John G Whittier (1807-892): Ichabod!

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day

Whose conquering ray

May chase these fogs;

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!

Light will repay

The wrongs of night;

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!

Robert Herrick (1591-1674): Emblems. Book i. Emblem 14.

Rich windows that exclude the light,

And passages that lead to nothing.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): A Long Story.

Virtue could see to do what virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where with her best nurse Contemplation

She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings,

That in the various bustle of resort

Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

He that has light within his own clear breast

May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day;

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts

Benighted walks under the midday sun.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 373.

by simon sarris • about