And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run, A mist retreating from the morning sun, A busy, bustling, still repeated dream; Its length?--A minute's pause, a moment's thought;...
Resembles Life what once was held of Light, Too ample in itself for human sight? An absolute Self, an element ungrounded All, that we see, all colours of all shade By encroach of darkness made?...
What is right living? Just to do your best When worst seems easier. To bear the ills Of daily life with patient cheerfulness Nor waste dear time recounting them. To talk...
Well, say you the world is a chamber of sleep, And life but a sleeping and dreaming? Then I too would dream: and would joyously reap The blooms of harmonious seeming;...
What is to come we know not. But we know That what has been was good, was good to show, Better to hide, and best of all to bear. We are the masters of the days that were:...
I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence filled the air with the ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality....
Young Alick gate wed, as all gradely chaps do, An tuk Sally for better or war; A daycenter felly ne'er foller'd a ploo, - Th' best lad ov his mother's bi far. ...
A'a, dear! what a life has a mother! At leeast, if they're hamper'd like me, Thro' mornin' to neet ther's some bother, An' ther will be, aw guess, wol aw dee.
"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me. I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul, Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system...
Be the mistress of my choice, Clean in manners, clear in voice; Be she witty, more than wise, Pure enough, though not precise; Be she showing in her dress, Like a civil wilderness,...
The words we speak on the empty air, Are never lost, but recorded there; The process we may not comprehend, Nor how the words with the air may blend, But science shows what results may be;...
Love starts with a little throb in the heart, And in the end one dies Like an ill-treated toy. Love is born in a look or in four words, The little spark that burnt the whole house....
He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing lest primordial Motherhood forsake his limbs, the child no longer rest, Drinking joy as it were milk upon his breast....
Winter froze both brook and well; Fast and fast the snowflakes fell; Children gathered round the hearth Made a summer of their mirth; When a boy, so lately come That his life was yet one sum...
It is not the lark's clear tone Cleaving the morning air with a soaring cry, Nor the nightingale's dulcet melody all the balmy night - Not these alone Make the sweet sounds of summer;...
Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street; There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat; But it's curious how people think it's a treat For me to look out of the window! ...
Well, what of it then, if your heart be weighed with the yoke Of the world's neglect? and the smoke Of doubt, blown into your eyes, make night of your road? And the sting of the goad,...