Richard Crashaw
English poet and cleric (c.1613 – 1649)
Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) English poet, styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets.
Quotes
edit- Love's great artillery.
- Prayer L18
- ’Tis love, not years or limbs that can
Make the martyr, or the man.- A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa
- Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood
Of baptism blends them all into a blood.
Christ's faith makes but one body of all souls,
And love's that body's soul; no law controls
Our free traffic for heav'n; we may maintain
Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from Spain.
What soul soe'er, in any language, can
Speak heav'n like hers is my soul's countryman.
Oh, 'tis not Spanish, but 'tis heav'n she speaks!
'Tis heaven that lies in ambush there, and breaks
From thence into the wond'ring reader's breast,
Who feels his warm heart hatched into a nest
Of little eagles and young loves, whose high
Flights scorn the lazy dust and things that die.- Apology for the Foregoing Hymn (the Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa)
- If I were lost in misery
What was it to Thy heaven and thee?
What was it to Thy precious blood
If my foul heart called for a flood?
What if my faithless soul and I
Would needs fall in
With guilt and sin,
What did the lamb that He should die?
What did the lamb that He should need,
When the wolf sins, Himself to bleed?- Caritas Nimia; or, The Dear Bargain
- Let hearts and lippes speak lowd; and say
Hail, door of life: and sourse of day!
The door was shutt, the fountain seal'd;
Yet Light was seen and Life reveald.
The door was shutt, yet let in day,
The fountain seald, yet life found way.- The Hymn, O Gloriosa Domina (translation of the hymn of Venantius Fortunatus)
- The conscious water saw its God and blushed.
- Epigrammatum sacrorum liber (1634). Translated by John Dryden from Crashaw's Latin original: "Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit (The modest Nymph saw the god, and blushed)", Complete works of Richard Crashaw (1872), edited by Alexander B. Grosart, vol. 2, p. 96.
- Now though the blow that snatcht him hence,
Stopt the Mouth of Eloquence,
Though she be dumb e'r since his Death,
Not us'd to speak but in his Breath;
Yet if at least she not denies,
The sad Language of our Eyes,
We are contented: for then this
Language none more fluent is.
Nothing speaks our Grief so well
As to speak nothing: Come then tell
Thy mind in Tears who e'r thou be,
That ow'st a Name to Misery:
Eyes are Vocal, Tears have Tongues,
And there be words not made with Lungs;
Sententious showers, O let them fall,
Their cadence is Rhetorical.
Here's a Theme will drink th' expence
Of all thy watry Eloquence;
Weep then, onely be exprest
Thus much, He's Dead, and Weep the rest.- Upon the Death of a Gentleman
- A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer’s day.- In Praise of Lessius’s Rule of Health, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- The modest front of this small floor,
Believe me, reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can,—
“Here lies a truly honest man!”- Epitaph upon Mr. Ashton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Thou water turn'st to wine, fair friend of life;
Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign,
Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife,
And so turns wine to water back again.- Steps to the Temple, To Our Lord upon the Water Made Wine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 516.
Wishes for the Supposed Mistress
edit- Quotes reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me.
- Where’er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny.
- Days that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.
- Life that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!
- Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers.
