Philip James Bailey

Philip James Bailey (22 April 1816 – 6 September 1902) was an English poet, most famous as the author of Festus.

Festus (1839)

 * Festus (1872 edition) at the Internet Archive · (1889 edition) at Google Books




 * Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
 * Proem


 * Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.
 * Proem


 * Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.
 * Proem


 * Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.


 * Any heart turned Godward feels more joy In one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised By all the feasts of earth since its foundation.


 * I cannot be content with less than heaven; Living, and comprehensive of all life. Thee, universal heaven, celestial all; Thee, sacred seat of intellective time; Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth, Star-throned.


 * Men might be better if we better deemed Of them. The worst way to improve the world Is to condemn it.
 * Scene IV, A Mountain; Sunrise. Compare: "The surest plan to make a man / Is to think him so", J. R. Lowell, Biglow Papers, II, ii. St. 9


 * We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. Life's but a means unto an end; that end Beginning, mean, and end to all things, — God. The dead have all the glory of the world.
 * Scene V, A Country Town


 * Who never doubted never half believed Where doubt there truth is—'t is her shadow.
 * Scene V, A Country Town; comparable to Alfred, Lord Tennyson "There lives more faith in honest doubt / Believe me, than in half the creeds."


 * America thou half-brother of the world! With something good and bad of every land.
 * Scene X, Earth's Surface


 * Music tells no truths.
 * Scene XI, A Village Feast

Passions to be roused up: while ruled by men; While all the powers and treasures of a land At beck of the ambitious, wrongs may be Offered, with insult; yea, '''while rights are worth Maintaining; freedom keeping, or life having, So long dread I, the sword shall shine.'''
 * While men are what they are; while they have bad


 * Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
 * Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere


 * The worst men often give the best advice.


 * They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

But needs it, and may learn.
 * Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life


 * Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell.


 * Respect is what we owe; love what we give.


 * Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.