Famous quotes containing the words hall, oates, years, sacred and/or songs:
“For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground—old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
“Sweet is the day of sacred rest;
No mortal cares shall seize my breast;
O may my heart in tune be found
Like David’s harp of solemn sound.”
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
“We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of the proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)