• A mighty Hand, from an exhaustless Urn,
    Pours forth the never-ending Flood of Years,
    Among the nations. How the rushing waves
    Bear all before them! On their foremost edge,
    And there alone, is Life. The Present there
    Tosses and foams, and fills the air with roar
    Of mingled noises. There are they who toil,
    And they who strive, and they who...

  • Three years she grew in sun and shower;
    Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower
      On earth was never sown:
    This child I to myself will take;
    She shall be mine, and I will make
      A lady of my own.

    “Myself will to my darling be
    Both law and impulse; and with me
      The girl, in rock and plain,
    In earth and heaven, in glade and...

  •   WHENE’ER with haggard eyes I view
        This dungeon that I ’m rotting in,
      I think of those companions true
        Who studied with me at the U-
                    niversity of Gottingen,
                    niversity of Gottingen.

      [Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds:]

      Sweet...

  • In Ebon Box, when years have flown

    To reverently peer,

    Wiping away the velvet dust

    Summers have sprinkled there!


    To hold a letter to the light —

    Grown Tawny now, with time —

    To con the faded syllables

    That quickened us like Wine!


    Perhaps a Flower's shrivelled check...

  • The harm of Years is on him —

    The infamy of Time —

    Depose him like a Fashion

    And give Dominion room.


    Forget his Morning Forces —

    The Glory of Decay

    Is a minuter Pageant

    Than least Vitality.

  • The Months have ends — the Years — a knot —

    No Power can untie

    To stretch a little further

    A Skein of Misery —


    The Earth lays back these tired lives

    In her mysterious Drawers —

    Too tenderly, that any doubt

    An ultimate Repose —


    The manner of the Children —

    ...

  • The Pile of Years is not so high

    As when you came before

    But it is rising every Day

    From recollection's Floor

    And while by standing on my Heart

    I still can reach the top

    Efface the mountain with your face

    And catch me ere I drop