The boy lay dead On the low couch, on whose denuded whole, To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled, The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed....
Whether we write or speak or do but look We are ever unapparent. What we are Cannot be transfused into word or book. Our soul from us is infinitely far. However much we give our thoughts the will...
If that apparent part of life's delight Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight, Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen....
When I do think my meanest line shall be More in Time's use than my creating whole, That future eyes more clearly shall feel me In this inked page than in my direct soul;...
I could not think of thee as piec'd rot, Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead; Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought And what thou wert in me had never fled....
Oh to be idle loving idleness! But I am idle all in hate of me; Ever in action's dream, in the false stress Of purposed action never set to be. Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,...
How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action, When the miserly press of each day's need Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?...
As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled, Doth overflow his purpose with made heat, And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed What should have been an inner instinct's feat;...
Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee-- That entire death shall null my entire thought; And I feel torture, not that I believe thee, But that I cannot disbelieve thee not....
How many masks wear we, and undermasks, Upon our countenance of soul, and when, If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks, Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?...
As to a child, I talked my heart asleep With empty promise of the coming day, And it slept rather for my words made sleep Than from a thought of what their sense did say....
Like to a ship that storms urge on its course, By its own trials our soul is surer made. The very things that make the voyage worse Do make it better; its peril is its aid....
As the lone, frighted user of a night-road Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect, Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load Of that brink-nothing he doth but suspect;...
When I should be asleep to mine own voice In telling thee how much thy love's my dream, I find me listening to myself, the noise Of my words othered in my hearing them....
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn, And the whole darkness of the world we know, How can we guess its truth, to darkness born, The obscure consequence of absent glow?...
Beauty and love let no one separate, Whom exact Nature did to each other fit, Giving to Beauty love as finishing fate And to Love beauty as true colour of it. Let he but friend be who the soul finds fair,...
Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling From the mixed sense of being not loved and loving, Who with feared longing half would know, dissembling With what he'd wish proved what he fears soon proving,...
We never joy enjoy to that full point Regret doth wish joy had enjoy'd been, Nor have the strength regret to disappoint Recalling not past joy's thought, but its mien. Yet joy was joy when it enjoy'd was...
My love, and not I, is the egoist. My love for thee loves itself more than thee; Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist, And makes me live that it may feed on me. In the country of bridges the bridge is...
Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night, In one black mystery two void mysteries blends; The stray stars, whose innumerable light Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;...