La oración es voz del alma,
 Ya palabras lleve ó nó,
De una llama que arde oculta
 Generosa vibración.

Un suspiro que se exhala,
...

Vase un amigo, y otro, y otro luégo:
 No hay vínculo suave
Que en esta vida, ajena de sosiego,
 Con el morir no acabe.
Si aquí tuviese término el camino,
...

Friend after friend departs:
  Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
  That finds not here an end;
Were this frail world our only rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of time,
  Beyond this vale...

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
  Uttered or unexpressed—
The motion of a hidden fire
  That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burthen of a sigh,
  The falling of a tear—
The upward glancing of an eye,
  When none but God is near...

The Bird that soars on highest wing
  Builds on the ground her lowly nest;
And she that doth most sweetly sing
  Sings in the shade, where all things rest;
In lark and nightingale we see
What honor hath humility.

When Mary chose “the better part...

  FOREVER with the Lord!
  Amen! so let it be!
Life from the dead is in that word,
  And immortality.

  Here in the body pent,
  Absent from him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
  A day’s march nearer home.

  My Father’s...

From “The Pelican Island”
—BIRDS, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
In plumage, delicate and beautiful,
Thick without burden, close as fishes’ scales,
Or loose as full-grown poppies to the breeze;...

From “The Pelican Island”
                            EVERY one,
By instinct taught, performed its little task,—
To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
From its own essence exquisitely modelled;
There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
Still...

[Battle of Sempach, fourteenth century]

  “MAKE way for Liberty!”—he cried;
Made way for Liberty, and died!
  In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood!
A wall, where every conscious stone
Seemed to its kindred thousands grown...

There is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o’er all the world beside,
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth:...