Aegina, Greece - 20071. ”A letter always seemed to me like immortality
because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.”
2. “Ample make this bed. / Make this bed with awe; / In it wait till judgement break / Excellent and fair.”
3. “And then a Plank in Reason broke,
And I dropped down, and down,
And hit a World, at every plunge…”
4. “And so upon this wise I prayed,--
Great Spirit, give to me
A heaven not so large as yours
But large enough for me.”
5. “A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.
His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.”
6. “A word is dead,
When it is said;
Some say. I say
It just began
to live that day.”
7. "Beauty is not caused. It is."
8. “Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality.”
9. “Come slowly, Eden / Lips unused to thee. / Bashful, sip thy jasmines, / As the fainting bee, / Reaching late his flower, / Round her chamber hums, / Counts his nectars -alights, / And is lost in balms!”
10. “Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
11. "Estranged from Beauty--none can be-- / For Beauty is Infinity-- / And power to be finite ceased / Before Identity was leased."
12. “Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see;
But Microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.”
13. “Fame is a bee. / It has a song / It has a sting / Ah, too, it has a wing.”
14. “Forever is composed of nows.”
15. “Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made.”
16. “He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!”
17. “Heavenly Father" -- take to thee
The supreme iniquity
Fashioned by thy candid Hand
In a moment contraband --
Though to trust us seem to us
More respectful --
"We are Dust" --
We apologize to thee
For thine own Duplicity.”
18. “Hope is a thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without words / And never stops at all.”
19. “How dreary to be somebody! / How public, like a frog / To tell your name the livelong day/ To an admiring bog!”
20. “How much can come / And much can go, / And yet abide the world!”
21. “How strange that nature does knock, and yet does not intrude!”
22. "If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
23. “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”
24. “I felt it shelter to speak to you.”
25. “Immured in Heaven!
What a Cell!
Let every Bondage be,
Thou sweetest of the Universe,
Like that which ravished thee!”
26. ”I never saw a moor, / I never saw the sea; / Yet know I how the heather looks, / And what a wave must be. / I never spoke with God, / Nor visited in Heaven; / Yet certain am I of the spot, / As if a chart were given.”
27. ”It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
28. “It was not death, for I stood up, / And all the dead lie down; / It was not night, for all the bells / Put out their tongues, for noon.”
29. “Luck is not chance / It's Toil / Fortune's expensive smile / Is earned.”
30. “Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,--you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.”
31. “My life closed twice before its close; / It yet remains to see / If Immortality unveil / A third event to me.”
32. “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”
33. ”One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.”
34. “Our journey has advanced; / Our feet were almost come / To that odd fork in Being's road,/ Eternity by term.”
35. ”Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed.”
36. “Surgeons must be very careful / When they take the knife! / Underneath their fine incisions / Stirs the Culprit - Life!”
37. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Success in circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise
As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.”
38. “That love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love.”
39. “The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--books.”
40. “The Gleam of an heroic act,
Such strange illumination--
The Possible's slow fuse it lit
By the Imagination.”
41. “The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.”
42. “The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.”
43. “There's a certain slant of light, / On winter afternoons, / That oppresses, like the weight / Of cathedral tunes.”
44. “There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul.”
45. “The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.”
46. “They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
47. “This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond --
Invisible, as Music --
But positive, as Sound --
It beckons, and it baffles --
Philosophy -- don't know --
And through a Riddle, at the last --
Sagacity, must go --
To guess it, puzzles scholars --
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown --
Faith slips -- and laughs, and rallies --
Blushes, if any see --
Plucks at a twig of Evidence --
And asks a Vane, the way --
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit --
Strong Hallelujahs roll --
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul --“
48. “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee, / And revery. / The revery alone will do, / If bees are few.”
49. “To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.”
50. “Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality.”
51. “We trust in plumed procession / For such the angels go / Rank after Rank, with even feet / And uniforms of Snow.”
52. “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
53. “Witchcraft was hung, in history
But history and I
Find all the witchcraft that we need
Around us, every day.”
54. “You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.
You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer, --
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.”
“'Why do I love' You, Sir?
Because
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.
Because He knows and
Do not You
And We know not
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so
The Lightning never asked an Eye
Wherefore it struck when He was by
Because He knows it cannot speak
And reasons not contained
Of Talk
There be preferred by Daintier Folk
The Sunrise Sir compelleth Me
Because He's Sunrise and I see
Therefore Then
I love Thee”
“Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port-
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
Tonight in thee!”
