God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.
Oh the long and dreary Winter! Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm.
Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods.
Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside.
The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!
For next to being a great poet is the power of understanding one.
The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!
The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.
Buried was the bloody hatchet; Buried was the dreadful war-club; Buried were all warlike weapons, And the war-cry was forgotten. Then was peace among the nations.
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again.
See yonder fire! It is the moon slow rising o’er the eastern hill. It glimmers on the forest tips, and through the dewy foliage drips In little rivulets of light, and makes the heart in love with night.
All things are symbols: the external shows Of Nature have their image in the mind, As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves.
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls, The burial-ground God’s-Acre.
O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour’s breast, And thus to journey on!
Books are sepulchres of thought.
With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain!
Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.
All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.