And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat;
You...

From “Youth and Age”
VERSE, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
      With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
            When I was young!
When I was young?—Ah, woful when!
Ah! for...

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
    And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my making dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay
    ...

We pledged our hearts, my love and I,—
  I in my arms the maiden clasping;
I could not tell the reason why,
  But, O, I trembled like an aspen!

Her father’s love she bade me gain;
  I went, and shook like any reed!
I strove to act the man,—in...

How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
  Honor or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits.
If any man obtain that which he merits,
  Or any merit that which he obtains.

For shame, dear Friend; renounce...

Which Died before Baptism
“BE, rather than be called, a child of God,”
Death whispered!—with assenting nod,
Its head upon its mother’s breast,
    The baby bowed, without demur—
Of the kingdom of the Blest
    Possessor, not inheritor.

From the First Part of “Wallenstein,” Act III. Sc. 4.

WALLENSTEIN  (in soliloquy).  Is it possible?
Is ’t so? I can no longer what I would!
No longer draw back at my liking! I
Must do the deed, because I thought of it,
And fed this heart here with a dream...

O, It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend’s fancy; or, with head bent low...

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 1
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And...

Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?—
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch-tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of...