Life and Existence

What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me.

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.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard.

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o’ercomes doubt.

Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset touch, A fancy from a flower bell, someone’s death, A chorus ending from Euripides.

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s, Is—not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be—but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means.

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

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

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, “What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.”

The instant made eternity— And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, forever ride?

The instant made eternity— And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, forever ride?

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new! 2

To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up and begin again.

The Savior at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off.

And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke!