Emotions and Feelings

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

The happiest day—the happiest hour My sear’d and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I am the somber one, the unconsoled widower, The Prince of Aquitaine whose tower was destroyed. 2 My only star is dead, and my star-studded lute Wears the black sun of Melancholy.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” 2

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

A Lady with a Lamp [Florence Nightingale] shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.

Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.