"So be it the wind and sun That reared thy limbs and lit thy veins with life Have blown and shone upon thee not for nought— If these have fed and fired thy spirit as mine With love, with faith that casts out fear, with joy, With trust in truth and pride in trust — if thou Be theirs indeed as theirs am I, with me Shalt thou take part and with my sea-folk — aye, Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear Part of our praise for ever."

"A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's, Diverse and individual, many and one, Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's, Of all endurance unendurable else, Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar, Not sapless yet nor soulless."

"What sentence shall be given on mine? Of man, As ill or well God means me, well or ill Shall judgment pass upon me : but of God, If God himself be righteous or be God, Who being unrighteous were but god of hell, The sentence given shall judge me just..."

"God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous. Go."

"A crown and justice? Night and day Shall first be yoked together."

"Is not Precedent indeed a King of men?"

"Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last."

"The sweetest flowers in all the world— A baby's hands."

"Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat, They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet."

"A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet."

"Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?"

"Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee."

"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die."

"As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead."

"The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain; The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain."

"In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead."

"Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks"

"The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep."

"For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight For a day and a night."

"Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name."

"I have no remedy for fear; there grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart."

"Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable."

"Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art, And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love."

"The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox."

"The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song."

"To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office."

"A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts."

"It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur."

"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things."

"But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man."

"O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ."

"Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives."

"I shall go my ways, tread out my measure, Fill the days of my daily breath With fugitive things not good to treasure, Do as the world doth, say as it saith; But if we had loved each other — O sweet, Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet, The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure To feel you tread it to dust and death — Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wine and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven, If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?"

"The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life."

"I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me. You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there."

"It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead."

"The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. I lose what I long for, save what I can, My love, my love, and no love for me!"

"We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been. I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one."

"In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!"

"Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn."

"There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she."

"I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide."

"I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me."

"Change lays not her hand upon truth."

"Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget."

"Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?"

"Those eyes the greenest of things blue The bluest of things grey."

"Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, Such fleet things sweet!"

"Gone deeper than all plummets sound."

"O bitterness of things too sweet!"