Life and Existence

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market.

And almost everyone when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like Him.

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together.

We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air.

We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers, Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; Long ago he was one of the singers, But now he is one of the dumbs.

Have you found your life distasteful? My life did and does smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I’ll complain. Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

Out of the wreck I rise.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life’s business being just the terrible choice.

You never know what life means till you die: Even throughout life, ’tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance.

You never know what life means till you die: Even throughout life, ’tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance.

Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i’ the dark to rise by. And I rise.

We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last Comes God behind them.

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face.

How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

The best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy.

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.

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! ’Thinketh, He dwelleth i’ the cold o’ the moon.

Therefore I summon age To grant youth’s heritage.