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Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;
I never name thee even.
But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?
For thou art so near Heaven
That heavenward meditations pause upon thee.
...

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?
...

I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land
Within a field's embrace -
The very sea! Afar it fled the strand
And gave the seasons chase,
And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,
Saw sunrise face to face....

No new delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
Poets unborn and unrevealed.
...

"When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people."

Ah no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not they who gave...

Farewell to one now silenced quite,
Sent out of hearing, out of sight,-
My friend of friends, whom I shall miss.
He is not banished, though, for this,-
Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight.
...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
My lyre whereof I make my melody.
I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
My lyre whereof I make my melody.
I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
...

Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine?
This winter of a silent poet's heart
Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art,
Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.
...

Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine?
This winter of a silent poet's heart
Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art,
Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.
...

Lord, where are Thy prerogatives?
Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;
The king rewards, remits, forgives,
The poet to a throne has stept.

And Thou, despoiled, hast given away...

The Lady Poverty was fair:
But she has lost her looks of late,
With change of times and change of air.
Ah slattern, she neglects her hair,
Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no state...

"Audemus dicere 'Pater Noster.'"-CANON OF THE MASS.

There is a bolder way,
There is a wilder enterprise than this
All-human iteration day by day.
Courage, mankind! Restore Him what is His.
...

I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.
...

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
...

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
-Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,...

Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?
Out of the long West did this wild wind come -
Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,
Ready and dumb, until...

Thou who singest through the earth,
All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever...