ite the threshold stairs
Of life."

"The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit
Of wisdom. Wait."

"Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand
When the tide ebbs in sunshine."

"Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gather'd color day by day."

"I could no more, but lay like one in trance,
That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends,
And can not speak, nor move, nor make one sign,
But lies and dreads his doom."

"Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust;
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'T is better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.

But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said).

And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencil'd shadow play.

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears,
Ah me! the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick,
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of being slow.

I can not love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.

From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face.

And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.

Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.

And hear at times a sentinel,
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well."

"Brawling, or like a clamor of the rooks
At distance, ere they settle for the night."

"In words whose echo lasts, they were so sweet."

"That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and flows."

"But