C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Skull

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Shakespeare.

Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, its portals foul;
Yes, this was once ambition’s airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.

Byron.

Thou hollow skull! what meanings lurk
Beneath that grin? ’tis but to say
Thy brain like mine was once at work
With thoughts that led thee far astray;
Longing for truth, you sought the day’s clear light,
But miserably stray’d in gloom and night.

Goethe.

O empty vault of former glory!
Where’er thou wert in time of old,
Thy surface tells thy living story
Though now so hollow, dead, and cold:
For in thy form is yet descried
The traces left of young desire;
The painter’s art, the statesman’s pride,
The muse’s song, the poet’s fire;
But these, forsooth, now seem to be
Mere lumps on thy periphery.

Dr. Forster.

These various organs show the place
Where friendship lov’d, where passion glow’d,
Where veneration grew in grace,
Where justice sway’d, where man was proud—
Whence wit its slippery sallies threw
On vanity, thereby defeated;
Where hope’s imaginary view
Of things to come (fond fool) is seated;
Where circumspection made us fear,
’Mid gleams of joy some danger near.

Dr. Forster.

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