Explore popular quotes and sayings by a poet Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
Last updated on April 19, 2025.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith was a poet, fiction writer, editor, lecturer, and women's rights activist whose career spanned six decades, from the 1830s to the 1880s. Most well-known at the start of her professional career for her poem "The Sinless Child" which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1842, her reputation today rests on her feminist writings, including "Woman and Her Needs", a series of essays published in the New York Tribune between 1850 and 1851 that argued for women's spiritual and intellectual capacities as well as women's equal rights to political and economic opportunities, including rights of franchise and higher education.
White wing'd angels meet the child
On the vestibule of life.
Faith is the subtle chain Which binds us to the infinite.
Spain- a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.
The measure of capacity is the measure of sphere to either man or woman.
Tis rushing now adown the spout,
And gushing out below,
Half frantic in its joyousness,
And wild in eager flow.
The earth is dried and parched with heat,
And it hath long'd to be
Released from out the selfish cloud,
To cool the thirsty tree.
How beautiful the water is! To me 'tis wondrous fair-- No spot can ever lonely be If water sparkle there; It hath a thousand tongues of mirth, Of grandeur, or delight, And every heart is gladder made When water greets the sight.
The tender violet bent in smiles To elves that sported nigh, Tossing the drops of fragrant dew To scent the evening sky.
Faith is the subtle chain which binds us to the infinite; the voice of a deep life within, that will remain until we crowd it thence.
How few women have any history after the age of thirty!
T is the summer prime, when the noiseless air in perfumed chalice lies.
Yes, this is life; and everywhere we meet,
Not victor crowns, but wailings of defeat.
We're disappointed because you think the neighborhood is safe, it's very quiet here.
My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?