1. “Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead.
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed,--
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close;
Her tears, to the wind-flower,--his blood, to the rose.”
2. “And each man stand with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.”
3. “As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.”
4. “A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.”
5. “Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee!”
6. “Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.”
7. “Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.”
8. “But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.”
9. “Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
And only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
10. “Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.”
11. “First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since it grew more clean and white.”
12. "For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life."
13. “For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.”
14. “Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all.”
15. “God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”
God Himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.”
16. “He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.”
17. “He said true things, but called them by wrong names.”
18. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”
19. ”I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”
20. ”If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.”
21. “If we tried / To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure / The future would not stand.”
22. “I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”
23. “It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me - the fullness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy. and only I know what was behind - the long wilderness without the blossoming rose..and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve - not you - but my own fate? Was ever anyone taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do?”
24. “Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”
25. “Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.”
26. “Light tomorrow with today!”
27. “Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the
Lightest part,
Love me in full
Being.”
“Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By reiteration chiefly.”
28. “Since when was genius found respectable?”
29. “The beauty seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”
30. “The devil's most devilish when respectable.”
31. “The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.”
32. “The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'”
33. "Think, In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence."
34. “Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.”
35. “We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
36. “What monster have we here?
A great Deed at this hour of day?
A great just deed -- and not for pay?
Absurd -- or insincere?”
37. ”What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Light, that never makes you wink;
Memory, that gives no pain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
- Something out of it, I think.”
38. “Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll--
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll
The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.”
39. “Whoever lives true life, will love true love.”
40. “Who so loves believes the impossible.”
41. “WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound / I strive and struggle to deliver right / That music of my nature, day and night / With dream and thought and feeling interwound / And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height / Which step out grandly to the infinite / From the dark edges of the sensual ground. / This song of soul I struggle to outbear / Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, / And utter all myself into the air: / But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll / Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, / Before that dread apocalypse of soul.”
42. “World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.”
43. “You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.”
