“I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.”

“Dark house, by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street,Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo quickly, waiting for a hand,A hand that can be clasp'd no more -Behold me, for I cannot sleep,And like a guilty thing I creepAt earliest morning to the door.He is not here; but far awayThe noise of life begins again,And ghastly thro' the drizzling rainOn the bald street breaks the blank day.”

“And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro' nature, moulding men.”

“Sooner or later I too may passively take the printOf the golden age--why not? I have neither hope nor trust;May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.”

“Be near me when my light is low,When the blood creeps, and the nerves prickAnd tingle; and the heart is sick,And all the wheels of Being slow.Be near me when the sensuous frameIs rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;And Time, a maniac scattering dust,And Life, a fury slinging flame.Be near me when my faith is dry,And men the flies of latter spring,That lay their eggs, and sting and singAnd weave their petty cells and die.Be near me when I fade away,To point the term of human strife,And on the low dark verge of lifeThe twilight of eternal day.”

“All day within the dreamy house,The doors upon their hinges creaked;The blue fly sang in the pane; the mouseBehind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,Or from the crevice peered about.Old faces glimmered through the doors,Old footsteps trod the upper floors,Old voices called her from without. . . .”

“So now I have sworn to buryAll this dead body of hateI feel so free and so clearBy the loss of that dead weight”