“Virtue - to be good and just -Every heart, when sifted well,Is a clot of warmer dust,Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.- The Vision of Sin”

“May make my heart as a milestone, set my face as a flint, cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.”

“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.”

“This madness has come on us for our sins.”

“I sometimes find it half a sin,To put to words the grief i feel,For words like nature,half reveal,and half conceal the soul within,”

“There has fallen a splendid tearFrom the passion-flower at the gate.She is coming, my dove, my dear;She is coming, my life, my fate.The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"And the lily whispers, "I wait." She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead,Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.”

“My own dim life should teach me this,That life shall live for evermore,Else earth is darkness at the core,And dust and ashes all that is;This round of green, this orb of flame,Fantastic beauty such as lurksIn some wild Poet, when he worksWithout a conscience or an aim.What then were God to such as I?'Twere hardly worth my while to chooseOf things all mortal, or to useA tattle patience ere I die;'Twere best at once to sink to peace,Like birds the charming serpent draws,To drop head-foremost in the jawsOf vacant darkness and to cease.”