Happiness and Joy

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light.

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.

The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array.

Which is the bliss of solitude.

A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

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

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

As Tammie glow’red, amazed, and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious.

Contented wi’ little and cantie wi’ mair.

Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.

Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See! The Good lies so near. Only learn to seize good fortune, For good fortune’s always here.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o’er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway, That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

To each his suff’rings: all are men, Condemn’d alike to groan, The tender for another’s pain, Th’ unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.

With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.