At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death.

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty.

To say of shame - what is it? Of virtue - we can miss it; Of sin-we can kiss it, And it's no longer sin.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.

Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?

For winter's rains and ruins are over... And in Green under wood and cover Blossum by blossom the spring begins.

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran .

Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

Ask nothing more of me sweet; All I can give you I give; Heart of my heart were it more, More would be laid at your feet.

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet.

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow.

I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name.

A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal, Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he smote again.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

Heart's ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart's ease.

On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;/ We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death

When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.

There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and rain and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading: Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her: Love lies bleeding.

Love, as is told by the seers of old, Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold, Flutters and flies in sunlit skies, Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.

There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.

When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

In fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand.

No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.

When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism — a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger.

And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

I dore not always touch her, lest the kiss Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss, Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin; Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.

I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet; He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.

Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal; Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain We'd hunt down Love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain.

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.

From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous.

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