That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!
How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
Finds progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Not God’s, and not the beast’s; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
At last awake from life, that insane dream we take for waking now.
Our aspirations are our responsibilities.
What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?
Truth that peeps Over the glass’s edge when dinner’s done.
Let friend trust friends, and love demand love’s like.
No work begun shall ever pause for death.
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain.
In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity; On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools – that’s vanity.
Why stay on the earth except to grow.
Sing, riding ’s a joy! For me I ride.
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne’er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
This could but have happened once,- And we missed it, lost it forever.
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.
All service ranks the same with God,- With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.
Lose who may-I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they!