Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;Yet how much wisdom sleeps with theeWhich not alone had guided me,But served the seasons that may rise; For can I doubt, who knew thee keenIn intellect, with force and skillTo strive, to fashion, to fulfil—I doubt not what thou wouldst have been: A life in civic action warm,A […]

High wisdom holds my wisdom less,That I, who gaze with temperate eyesOn glorious insufficiencies,Set light by narrower perfectness. But thou, that fillest all the roomOf all my love, art reason whyI seem to cast a careless eyeOn souls, the lesser lords of doom. For what wert thou? some novel powerSprang up for ever at a […]

The churl in spirit, up or downAlong the scale of ranks, thro’ all,To him who grasps a golden ball,By blood a king, at heart a clown; The churl in spirit, howe’er he veilHis want in forms for fashion’s sake,Will let his coltish nature breakAt seasons thro’ the gilded pale: For who can always act? but […]

Thy converse drew us with delight,The men of rathe and riper years:The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,Forgot his weakness in thy sight. On thee the loyal-hearted hung,The proud was half disarm’d of pride,Nor cared the serpent at thy sideTo flicker with his double tongue. The stern were mild when thou wert by,The flippant put […]

Heart-affluence in discursive talkFrom household fountains never dry;The critic clearness of an eye,That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk; Seraphic intellect and forceTo seize and throw the doubts of man;Impassion’d logic, which outranThe hearer in its fiery course; High nature amorous of the good,But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;And passion pure in snowy bloomThro’ all […]

I will not shut me from my kind,And, lest I stiffen into stone,I will not eat my heart alone,Nor feed with sighs a passing wind: What profit lies in barren faith,And vacant yearning, tho’ with mightTo scale the heaven’s highest height,Or dive below the wells of Death? What find I in the highest place,But mine […]

On that last night before we wentFrom out the doors where I was bred,I dream’d a vision of the dead,Which left my after-morn content. Methought I dwelt within a hall,And maidens with me: distant hillsFrom hidden summits fed with rillsA river sliding by the wall. The hall with harp and carol rang.They sang of what […]

It is the day when he was born,A bitter day that early sankBehind a purple-frosty bankOf vapour, leaving night forlorn. The time admits not flowers or leavesTo deck the banquet. Fiercely fliesThe blast of North and East, and iceMakes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves, And bristles all the brakes and thornsTo yon hard crescent, as […]

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light:The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the […]

To-night ungather’d let us leaveThis laurel, let this holly stand:We live within the stranger’s land,And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. Our father’s dust is left aloneAnd silent under other snows:There in due time the woodbine blows,The violet comes, but we are gone. No more shall wayward grief abuseThe genial hour with mask and mime,For change of […]