I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.
Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.
I worked with patience which means almost power.
I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud – I build it bright to see, – I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.
He lives most life whoever breathes most air.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.
In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov’d, us’d – well enough, I think, we’ve far’d, my heart and I.
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in it.
What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
My sun sets to raise again.
Since when was genius found respectable?
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And, ever since, it grew more clean and white.
My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.
All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.
The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.
What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.