Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete!
I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow; And ne’er a word said she; But, oh! The things I learned from her, When Sorrow walked with me.
I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.
Oh never star Was lost here but it rose afar.
Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
How very hard it is to be a Christian!
Say not “a small event!” Why “small”? Costs it more pain that this ye call A “great event” should come to pass From that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!
Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays!
What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.
Death was past, life not come: so he waited.
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.
I felt a strange delight in causing my decay.
Hold On. Hope Hard.
The best is yet to be.
The power of the night, the press of the storm, the post of the foe; where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, yet, the strong man must go.
Our business was done at the river’s brink;.
Time is counted, not by hours, but by heart-beats.
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
Read the text right and emancipate the world. – Robert Browning.
Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what’s a heaven for.