Ancestral Spirits

Famous quotes containing the words ancestral and/or spirits:

“The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)

“But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There’s a light and a shadow on every man
Who at last attains his lifted mark—
Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
Elate he never can be;
He feels that spirits which glad had hailed his worth,
Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
Glides white through the phosphorus sea.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)