Richard Henry Stoddard

"We have two lives about us, Two worlds in which we dwell; Within us, and without us, Alternate Heaven and Hell: Without, the somber Real, Within our hearts of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!"

"Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands, Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands, Silent above the flowers, her children lost, Slain by the arrows of the early frost."

"Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!"

"A voice of greeting from the wind was sent, The mists enfolded me with soft white arms, The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms, And every little daisy in the grass Did look into my face and smile to see me pass."

"All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty—Love!"

"We love in others what we lack ourselves, And would be every thing but what we are."

"There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again."

"Silence is the speech of love, The music of the spheres above."

"Children are the keys of Paradise. … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer."

"Not what we would, but what we must, Makes up the sum of living; Heaven is both more and less than just In taking and in giving."

"A face at the window, A tap on the pane: Who is it that wants me To-night in the rain?"

"It beckons, I follow. Good by to the light! I am going, oh! whither? Out into the night!"

"Joy may be a miser, But Sorrow’s purse is free."

"Day and night my thoughts incline To the blandishments of wine: Jars were made to drain, I think, Wine, I know, was made to drink!"

" I have been sojourning late Among the pleasant places of my Past, The green and quiet neighborhoods of Thought, In which I wandered in my wayward youth; With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her—ah when Did I not need her, solitary else?"

"Once when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. Each questioned each to know Whence came the Heavens above, and whence the Earth below."

"There is no death—the thing that we call death Is but another, sadder name for life, Which is itself an insufficient name, Faint recognition of that unknown Life— That Power whose shadow is the Universe."