Emotions and Feelings

The Soul selects her own Society— Then—shuts the Door— To her divine Majority— Present no more—

I tasted—careless—then— I did not know the Wine Came once a World—Did you? Oh, had you told me so— This Thirst would blister—easier—now

I tasted—careless—then— I did not know the Wine Came once a World—Did you? Oh, had you told me so— This Thirst would blister—easier—now

I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you—Nobody—too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know! How dreary—to be—Somebody! How public—like a Frog— To tell one’s name—the livelong June— To an admiring Bog!

“Hope” is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—

There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons— That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes—

To fight aloud, is very brave— But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe—

To fight aloud, is very brave— But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe—

For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.

For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit— Life!

Behold the life at ease; it drifts, The sharpened life commands its course.

With patient inattention hear him prate.

For singing till his heaven fills, ’Tis love of earth that he instills, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which over flows To lift us with him as he goes.

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall.

Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days— Thyrsis [Arthur Hugh Clough] and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.