"Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure."

"All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."

"Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?"

"Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!""

"Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all! Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men."

"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!""

"The ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"

"For I say this is death and the sole death,— When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest."

"What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same."

"The body sprang At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!"

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear (believe the aged friend), Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,— How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

"Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought."

"Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it; Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!"

"God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides,—one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her!"

"Other heights in other lives, God willing."

"Rafael made a century of sonnets."

"Lofty designs must close in like effects."

"That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it. This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one,— His hundred's soon hit; This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him."

"He said true things, but called them by the wrong names."

"When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something."

"Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist."

"Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais): "Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'""

"Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."

"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?"

"I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on."

"You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls."

"If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents."

"Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!"

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

"I do what many dream of, all their lives, — Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive — you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat — Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) — so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine."

"'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!"

"How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses Forever in joy!"

"God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are his children, one family here."

"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!"

"Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf."

"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:"

"He gathers earth's whole good into his arms; Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise, Marching to fortune, not surprised by her. One great aim, like a guiding-star, above— Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift His manhood to the height that takes the prize; A prize not near — lest overlooking earth He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote, So that he rest upon his path content: But day by day, while shimmering grows shine, And the faint circlet prophesies the orb, He sees so much as, just evolving these, The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength, To due completion, will suffice this life, And lead him at his grandest to the grave. After this star, out of a night he springs; A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts, Nor, as from each to each exultingly He passes, overleaps one grade of joy. This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift Of God and man, — reality, tradition, Fancy and fact — so well environ him, That as a mystic panoply they serve — Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind, And work his purpose out with half the world, While he, their master, dexterously slipt From such encumbrance, is meantime employed With his own prowess on the other half. Thus shall he prosper, every day's success Adding, to what is he, a solid strength — An aery might to what encircles him, Till at the last, so life's routine lends help, That as the Emperor only breathes and moves, His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk Become a comfort or a portent, how He trails his ermine take significance, — Till even his power shall cease to be most power, And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare Peril their earth its bravest, first and best, Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends— The man of men, the spirit of all flesh, The fiery centre of an earthly world!"

"The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth."

"When is man strong until he feels alone?"

"All service ranks the same with God,— With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first."

"In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now."

"Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,— Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas."

"The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearl'd; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!"

"Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this ye call A "great event" should come to pass From that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!"

"Any nose May ravage with impunity a rose."

"Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ In unexpanded infancy"

"Deeds let escape are never to be done."

"Have they fancies — slow, perchance, Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance Until by song each floating part be linked To each, and all grow palpable, distinct? He pondered this."

"So men believe And worship what they know not, nor receive Delight from."