Ah, why Should life all labour be?
All Life needs for life is possible to will.
And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan.
And every dew-drop paints a bow.
All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink Together.
God and Nature met in light.
God made thee good as thou art beautiful.
Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.
That man’s the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.
Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce.
Either sex alone is half itself.
In the long years liker they must grow; The man be more of woman, she of man.
I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city’s ancient legend into this.
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers.
O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may’st warble, eat and dwell.
Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand the downward slope to death.
Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.
We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.