Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
MY river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I ’ll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks,— Say, sea, Take me!
I am one of the lingering bad ones, and so do I slink away, and pause, and ponder, and ponder, and pause, and do work without knowing why - not surely for this brief world, and more sure it is not for heaven - and I ask what this message of Christ means.
Two Seasons, it is said, exist-
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost-
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?