“Shall love be blamed for want of faith?”

“Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,At last he beat his music out.There lives more faith in honest doubt,Believe me, than in half the creeds.He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,He would not make his judgment blind,He faced the spectres of the mindAnd laid them: thus he came at lengthTo find a stronger faith his own;And Power was with him in the night,Which makes the darkness and the light,And dwells not in the light alone,”

“What hope is here for modern rhymeTo him, who turns a musing eyeOn songs, and deeds, and lives, that lieForeshorten'd in the tract of time?These mortal lullabies of painMay bind a book, may line a box,May serve to curl a maiden's locks;Or when a thousand moons shall waneA man upon a stall may find,And, passing, turn the page that tellsA grief, then changed to something else,Sung by a long-forgotten mind.But what of that? My darken'd waysShall ring with music all the same;To breathe my loss is more than fame,To utter love more sweet than praise.”

“Oh yet we trust that somehow goodWill be the final goal of ill,To pangs of nature, sins of will,Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;That nothing walks with aimless feet;That not one life shall be destroy'd,Or cast as rubbish to the void,When God hath made the pile complete;That not a worm is cloven in vain;That not a moth with vain desireIs shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves another's gain.Behold, we know not anything;I can but trust that good shall fallAt last—far off—at last, to all,And every winter change to spring.So runs my dream: but what am I?An infant crying in the night:An infant crying for the light:And with no language but a cry.”

“I envy not in any moodsThe captive void of noble rage,The linnet born within the cage,That never knew the summer woods:I envy not the beast that takesHis license in the field of time,Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,To whom a conscience never wakes;Nor, what may count itself as blest,The heart that never plighted trothBut stagnates in the weeds of sloth;Nor any want-begotten rest.I hold it true, whate’er befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;‘Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.”

“Love is the only gold.”

“And what delights can equal thoseThat stir the spirit's inner deeps,When one that loves but knows not, reapsA truth from one that loves and knows?”