* * * * *

Love, like a bird, hath perch’d upon a spray
  For thee and me to hearken what he sings. 
Contented, he forgets to fly away;
  But hush!... remind not Eros of his wings.

* * * * *

Think not thy wisdom can illume away
The ancient tanglement of night and day. 
Enough, to acknowledge both, and both revere: 
They see not clearliest who see all things clear.

* * * * *

In mid whirl of the dance of Time ye start,
  Start at the cold touch of Eternity,
And cast your cloaks about you, and depart: 
  The minstrels pause not in their minstrelsy.

* * * * *

The beasts in field are glad, and have not wit
  To know why leapt their hearts when springtime shone. 
Man looks at his own bliss, considers it,
  Weighs it with curious fingers; and ’tis gone.

* * * * *

Momentous to himself as I to me
  Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
  I felt this truth, an instant, and no more.

* * * * *

The gods man makes he breaks; proclaims them each
  Immortal, and himself outlives them all: 
But whom he set not up he cannot reach
  To shake His cloud-dark sun-bright pedestal.

* * * * *

The children romp within the graveyard’s pale; The lark sings o’er a madhouse, or a gaol;—­ Such nice antitheses of perfect poise Chance in her curious rhetoric employs.

* * * * *

Our lithe thoughts gambol close to God’s abyss, Children whose home is by the precipice.  Fear not thy little ones shall o’er it fall:  Solid, though viewless, is the girdling wall.

* * * * *

Lives there whom pain hath evermore pass’d by
And Sorrow shunn’d with an averted eye? 
Him do thou pity, him above the rest,
Him of all hapless mortals most unbless’d.

* * * * *

Say what thou wilt, the young are happy never.  Give me bless’d Age, beyond the fire and fever,—­ Past the delight that shatters, hope that stings, And eager flutt’ring of life’s ignorant wings.

* * * * *

Onward the chariot of the Untarrying moves;
  Nor day divulges him nor night conceals;
Thou hear’st the echo of unreturning hooves
  And thunder of irrevocable wheels.

* * * * *

A deft musician does the breeze become
  Whenever an AEolian harp it finds: 
Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb
  Unto the most musicianly of winds.

* * * * *

I follow Beauty; of her train am I: 
  Beauty whose voice is earth and sea and air;
Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;
  Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere.