Must we count
Life a curse and not a blessing, summed-up in its whole amount,
Help and hindrance, joy and sorrow?
1086
ROBERT BROWNING:  La Saisiaz, Line 206.

Between two worlds, life hovers like a star ’Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge. 1087 BYRON:  Don Juan, Canto xv., St. 99.

Our life is scarce the twinkle of a star
In God’s eternal day.
1088
BAYARD TAYLOR:  Autumnal Vespers.

Life is the gift of God, and is divine. 1089 LONGFELLOW:  T. of a Wayside Inn, Emma and Eginhard.

What is life?  A thawing iceboard
  On a sea with sunny shore: 
Gay we sail; it melts beneath us;
  We are sunk and seen no more.
1090
CARLYLE:  Cui Bono.

Life’s a vast sea
That does its mighty errand without fail,
Panting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
1091
GEORGE ELIOT:  Spanish Gypsy, Bk. iii.

Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold: 
Not all Apollo’s Pythian treasures hold,
Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,
Can bribe the poor possession of a day.
1092
POPE:  Iliad, Bk. ix., Line 524.

So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
1093
TENNYSON:  In Memoriam, lv., St. 2.

=Light.=

Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born! 
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,
May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
1094
MILTON:  Par.  Lost, Bk. iii., Line 1.

But yet the light that led astray
    Was light from heaven.
1095
BURNS:  The Vision.

The light that never was, on sea or land;
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.
1096
WORDSWORTH:  Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, St. 4.

Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder
  All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder
  And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind.
1097
SWINBURNE:  Eve of Revolution, St. 10.

=Lightning.=

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night. 1098 SHAKS.:  Mid.  N. Dream, Act i., Sc. 1.

=Lilies.=

Like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourish’d,
I’ll hang my head and perish.
1099
SHAKS.:  Henry VIII, Act iii., Sc. 1.

In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair. 1100 MILTON:  Comus, Line 859.

=Lincoln, Abraham.=