Society became my glittering bride, And airy hopes my children.
A power is passing from the earth.
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yielded proof that they were born for immortality.
Where the statue stood Of Newton, with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.
Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath.
Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary’s Lake Float double, swan and shadow!
The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on a dim and perilous way!
A deep distress has humanised my soul.
Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.
When his veering gait And every motion of his starry train Seem governed by a strain Of music, audible to him alone.
Yet sometimes, when the secret cup Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up, He felt with spirit so profound.
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted.
And what if thou, sweet May, hast known Mishap by worm and blight; If expectations newly blown Have perished in thy sight; If loves and joys, while up they sprung, Were caught as in a snare; Such is the lot of all the young, However bright and fair.
Not in Utopia, – subterranean fields, – Or some secreted island, Heaven knows whereBut in the very world, which is the worldOf all of us, – the place where in the endWe find our happiness, or not at all.
And he is oft the wisest manWho is not wise at all.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud, And magnify thy name Almighty God! But man is thy most awful instrument, In working out a pure intent.
The clouds that gather round the setting sun, Do take a sober colouring from an eye, That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.