We whom to-night Love keeps awake
For his own joy, may one day break
Our fast in some Lethéan cave,
When we but a faint memory have,
...
I might not have it then — I might not, yet
She was so near to me, could I forget
She might be nearer? There was in her eyes —
...
I in the autumn of my days
Stand by a place of tears,
And hear the unborn children weep
Within the unborn years;
...
As the crinoid star-fish to the sea-base
By his stem fixed draws bare subsistence in
His straitened sphere, as in the sunless ooze
...
Time grows upon us until we exhaust
Hope's possibilities, and then we die
Who thus of life each make a holocaust
...
I have the man's-heart in me, and 'tis noble
To be alive, to think, to feel, to have
My part in all the precious come-and-go
...
The sky grows white with the moon,
And the sea yearns up to the night
As the soul to an unknown height,
Drawn thence by a starry rune.
...
Within time's stress, amid the facts of life,
Not in monastic solitudes, we find
A way to that is higher than ourselves.
...
Life is up and takes the morning;
Why should love still lie abed?
Lo! the charms of slumber scorning,
Tramps the troop that must be led.
...
The sun is set, and all the stars are come,
Stars I shall no more see; the air is still,
And my life waits the ruin so near now.
...