1. “A baby’s feet, like sea-shells pink
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel’s lips to kiss, we think,
A baby’s feet.”
2. “All gifts but one the jealous God may keep
From our soul's longing, one he cannot -- sleep.
This, though he grudge all other grace to prayer,
This grace his closed hand cannot choose but spare.”
3. “At the door of life by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death.”
4. “Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.”
5. “Forget that I remember
And dream that I forget.”
6. “For the crown of our life as it closes
Is darkness, the fruit there of dust;
No thorns go as deep as the rose's,
And love is more cruel than lust.
Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and division
Make barren our lives.”
7. “For words divide and rend
But silence is most noble till the end.”
8. “From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
9. “His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.”
10. “His speech is a burning fire.”
11. “In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.”
12. “I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live.”
13. “Love, as is told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.”
14. “O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.”
15. “Nay, then, what flames are these that leap and swell
As 'twere to show, where earth's foundations crack,
The secrets of the sepulchres of hell
On Dante's track?”
16. “The sweetest flowers in all the world—
A baby’s hands.”
17. “White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops, that plead for pardon
And pine for fright
Because the hard East blows
Over their maiden vows,
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.”
18. “Who knows but on their sleep may rise
Such light as never heaven let through
To lighten earth from Paradise?”
