CXXIVThat which we dare invoke to bless;Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;He, They, One, All; within, without;The Power in darkness whom we guess; I found Him not in world or sun,Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;Nor thro’ the questions men may try,The petty cobwebs we have spun: If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,I heard […]

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.O earth, what changes hast thou seen!There where the long street roars, hath beenThe stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flowFrom form to form, and nothing stands;They melt like mist, the solid lands,Like clouds they shape themselves and go. But in my spirit […]

Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,While I rose up against my doom,And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,To bare the eternal Heavens again, To feel once more, in placid awe,The strong imagination rollA sphere of stars about my soul,In all her motion one with law; If thou wert with me, and the graveDivide us […]

Sad Hesper o’er the buried sunAnd ready, thou, to die with him,Thou watchest all things ever dimAnd dimmer, and a glory done: The team is loosen’d from the wain,The boat is drawn upon the shore;Thou listenest to the closing door,And life is darken’d in the brain. Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,By thee the world’s […]

I trust I have not wasted breath:I think we are not wholly brain,Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death; Not only cunning casts in clay:Let Science prove we are, and thenWhat matters Science unto men,At least to me? I would not stay. Let him, the wiser man who springsHereafter, up […]

Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo quickly, not as one that weepsI come once more; the city sleeps;I smell the meadow in the street; I hear a chirp of birds; I seeBetwixt the black fronts long-withdrawnA light-blue lane of early dawn,And think of early days and thee, And bless thee, for thy lips […]

Contemplate all this work of Time,The giant labouring in his youth;Nor dream of human love and truth,As dying Nature’s earth and lime; But trust that those we call the deadAre breathers of an ampler dayFor ever nobler ends. They say,The solid earth whereon we tread In tracts of fluent heat began,And grew to seeming-random forms,The […]

Is it, then, regret for buried timeThat keenlier in sweet April wakes,And meets the year, and gives and takesThe colours of the crescent prime? Not all: the songs, the stirring air,The life re-orient out of dustCry thro’ the sense to hearten trustIn that which made the world so fair. Not all regret: the face will […]

Now fades the last long streak of snow,Now burgeons every maze of quickAbout the flowering squares, and thickBy ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long,The distance takes a lovelier hue,And drown’d in yonder living blueThe lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,The flocks are […]

Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall railAgainst her beauty? May she mixWith men and prosper! Who shall fixHer pillars? Let her work prevail. But on her forehead sits a fire:She sets her forward countenanceAnd leaps into the future chance,Submitting all things to desire. Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain—She cannot fight the fear of […]