"We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through; But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers."

"Not here, O Apollo Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea."

"Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away."

"He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth."

"Time may restore us in his course Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force; But where will Europe’s latter hour Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?"

"Wordsworth has gone from us — and ye, Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen — on this iron time Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears."

"Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole."

"Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease."

"The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man."

"’Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, the Nine. —The leader is fairest, But all are divine."

"Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear — And struck his finger on the place, And said — Thou ailest here, and here."

"Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul."

"No deep the Poet sees, but wide."

"She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door: She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing, "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she: And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea.""

"The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy."

"Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away?"

"Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say."

"Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate."

"But, ah! she gave me never a look, For her eyes were sealed to the holy book. Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more! Come away, come down, call no more!"

"Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below. Now my brothers call from the bay; Now the great winds shoreward blow; Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away. This way, this way!"

"Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep."

"France, fam'd in all great arts, in none supreme."

"Where the spent lights quiver and gleam; Where the salt weed sways in the stream; Where the sea-beasts rang’d all round Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground."

"Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye. When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?"

"Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In action’s dizzying eddy whirl’d, The something that infects the world."

"The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm."

"Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: The mellow glory of the Attic stage."

"Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good."

"But be his My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole."

"Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge."

"If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers."

"Such a price The Gods exact for song; To become what we sing."

"And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. — Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow."

"Who prop, thou ask'st in these bad days, my mind? He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men, Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind."

"Eutrapelia. "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners."

"English civilization — the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society — that is what interests me."

"For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry."

"That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation."

"Choose equality."

"What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty."

"The will is free; Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful; The seeds of god-like power are in us still; Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!"

"Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class."

"The Celts certainly have it in a wonderful measure."

"The power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly."

"Style...is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it."

"Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel — below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed."

"Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name."

"Ere the parting hour go by, Quick, thy tablets, Memory!"