“Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse,And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man.”

“Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.”

“Could man be drunk for ever      With liquor, love, or fights,Lief should I rouse at morning      And lief lie down of nights.But men at whiles are sober      And think by fits and starts,And if they think, they fasten      Their hands upon their hearts.”

“The half-moon westers low, my love,And the wind brings up the rain;And wide apart lie we, my love,And seas between the twain.I know not if it rains, my love, In the land where you do lie;And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,You know no more than I.”

“The Laws Of God, The Laws Of ManThe laws of God, the laws of man,He may keep that will and can;Now I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me;And if my ways are not as theirsLet them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn,Yet when did I make laws for them?Please yourselves, say I, and theyNeed only look the other way.But no, they will not; they must stillWrest their neighbour to their will,And make me dance as they desireWith jail and gallows and hell-fire.And how am I to face the oddsOf man’s bedevilment and God’s?I, a stranger and afraidIn a world I never made.They will be master, right or wrong;Though both are foolish, both are strong, And since, my soul, we cannot fly To Saturn or Mercury,Keep we must, if keep we can,These foreign laws of God and man.”

“The time you won your town the raceWe chaired you through the market-place;Man and boy stood cheering by,And home we brought you shoulder-high.Today, the road all runners come,Shoulder-high we bring you home,And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town.Smart lad, to slip betimes awayFrom fields where glory does not stay,And early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose.Eyes the shady night has shutCannot see the record cut,And silence sounds no worse than cheersAfter earth has stopped the ears.Now you will not swell the routOf lads that wore their honours out,Runners whom renown outranAnd the name died before the man.So set, before its echoes fade,The fleet foot on the sill of shade,And hold to the low lintel upThe still-defended challenge-cup.And round that early-laurelled headWill flock to gaze the strengthless dead,And find unwithered on its curlsThe garland briefer than a girl’s.”

“It nods and curtseys and recoversWhen the wind blows above,The nettle on the graves of loversThat hanged themselves for love.The nettle nods, the wind blows over,The man, he does not move,The lover of the grave, the loverThat hanged himself for love.”