Life and Existence

Small service is true service while it lasts: Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

The unimaginable touch of Time.

We feel that we are greater than we know.

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour.

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour.

Had ripened into faith, and faith become A passionate intuition.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine.

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.

To perish never.

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.