Orrery/history

Famous quotes containing the words orrery and/or history:

    Word of gloom from the war, one day;
    Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
    Little Giffen was up and away;
    A tear—his first—as he bade good-by,
    Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
    “I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
    But none of Giffen.—He did not write.
    —Francis Orrery Ticknor (1822–1874)

    Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)