I sometimes hold it half a sin, To put in words the grief I feel. For words, like nature, half reveal, And half conceal the soul within.
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
O Love, O fire! Once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.
Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone: And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky.
Thy leaf has perished in the green, And while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
