• Many things thou hast given me, dear heart;
    But one thing thou hast taken: that high dream
    Of heaven as of a country that should seem
    Beyond all glory that divinest art
    Has pictured:—with this I have had to part
    Since knowing thee;—how long, love, will the gleam
    Of each day’s sunlight on my pathway stream,
    Richer than what seemed richest...

  • Four things a man must learn to do
    If he would make his record true:
    To think without confusion clearly;
    To love his fellow-men sincerely;
    To act from honest motives purely;
    To trust in God and Heaven securely.

  • I Ain’t afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice,
    An’ things ’at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!
    I ’m pretty brave, I guess; an’ yet I hate to go to bed,
    For, when I ’m tucked up warm an’ snug an’ when my prayers are said,
    Mother tells me “Happy dreams!” and takes away the light,
    An’ leaves me lyin’ all alone an’ seein’ things...

  • Best Things dwell out of Sight

    The Pearl — the Just — Our Thought.


    Most shun the Public Air

    Legitimate, and Rare —


    The Capsule of the Wind

    The Capsule of the Mind


    Exhibit here, as doth a Burr —

    Germ's Germ be where?

  •  
    * * *


    Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet

    This is not Done by jostling in the Street

  • I had some things that I called mine —

    And God, that he called his,

    Till, recently a rival Claim

    Disturbed these amities.


    The property, my garden,

    Which having sown with care,

    He claims the pretty acre,

    And sends a Bailiff there.


    The station of the parties

    ...

  • Destruction marks thee! o’er the blood-stain’d heath

    Is faintly borne the stifled wail of death;

    Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die

    In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie.

    The sternly wise, the mildly good, have sped

    To the...

  • Some things that fly there be —

    Birds — Hours — the Bumblebee —

    Of these no Elegy.


    Some things that stay there be —

    Grief — Hills — Eternity —

    Nor this behooveth me.


    There are that resting, rise.

    Can I expound the skies?

    How still the Riddle lies!

  • The Things that never can come back, are several —

    Childhood — some forms of Hope — the Dead —

    Though Joys — like Men — may sometimes make a Journey —

    And still abide —

    We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor,

    Their Routes are fair —

    But think enlarged of all that they will tell us

    Returning...

  • The things we thought that we should do

    We other things have done

    But those peculiar industries

    Have never been begun —


    The Lands we thought that we should seek

    When large enough to run

    By Speculation ceded

    To Speculation's Son —


    The Heaven, in which we hoped to pause...