Robert Pollok

Robert Pollok (c. 1798 – 15 September 1827) was a Scottish poet best known for The Course of Time, published the year of his death.

Quotes

The Course of Time (published 1827)

• Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.
  • Book i, line 464.

• Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
  Star of Eternity! The only star
  By which the bark of man could navigate
  The sea of life and gain the coast of bliss
  Securely.
  • Book ii, line 270.

• He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced,
  As some vast river of unfailing source,
  Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed
  And opened new fountains in the human heart.
  • Book iv, line 684.

• He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane,"
  And played familiar with his hoary locks.
  • Book iv, line 689. Compare: "And I have loved thee, Ocean! … And laid my hand upon thy mane,—as I do here", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818), Canto IV, st. 184.

• 'T was Slander filled her mouth with lying words,
  Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin.
  • Book iv, line 725.

• And now her eyes grew bright, and brighter still,
  Too bright for ours to look upon, suffused
  With many tears, and closed without a cloud.
  They set as sets the morning star, which goes
  Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
  Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
  But melts away into the light of heaven.
  • Book v, line 722.

• He was a man
  Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
  To serve the Devil in.
  • Book viii, line 616.

• With one hand he put
  A penny in the urn of poverty,
  And with the other took a shilling out.
  • Book viii, line 632.