A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.
So is Hope Changed for Despair-one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven's high cope Fortune is god-all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you.
Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory.
I stood within the city disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passng through the streets;
and heard the Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood.
Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.