“The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life: those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain.”

“Love, is it morning risen or night deceasedThat makes the mirth of this triumphant east?Is it bliss given or bitterness put byThat makes most glad men's hearts at love's high feast?Grief smiles, joy weeps, that day should live and die."Is it with soul's thirst or with body's drouthThat summer yearns out sunward to the south,With all the flowers that when thy birth drew nighWere molten in one rose to make thy mouth?O love, what care though day should live and die?"Is the sun glad of all love on earth,The spirit and sense and work of things and worth?Is the moon sad because the month must flyAnd bring her death that can but bring back birth?For all these things as day must live and die."Love, is it day that makes thee thy delightOr thou that seest day made out of thy light?Love, as the sun and sea are thou and I,Sea without sun dark, sun without sea bright;The sun is one though day should live and die."O which is elder, night or light, who knows?And life or love, which first of these twain grows?For life is born of love to wail and cry,And love is born of life to heal his woes,And light of night, that day should live and die."O sun of heaven above the wordly sea,O very love, what light is this of thee!My sea of soul is deep as thou art high,But all thy light is shed through all of me,As love's through love, while day shall live and die.”

“As the dawn loves the sunlight that must ceaseEre dawn again may rise and pass in peace;Must die that she being dead may live again,To be by his new rising nearly slain.So rolls the great wheel of the great world round,And no change in it and no fault is found,And no true life of perdurable breath,And surely no irrevocable death.Day after day night comes that day may break,And day comes back for night’s reiterate sake.Each into each dies, each of each is born:Day past is night, shall night past not be morn?Out of this moonless and faint-hearted nightThat love yet lives in, shall there not be light?Light strong as love, that love may live in yet?Alas, but how shall foolish hope forgetHow all these loving things that kill and dieMeet not but for a breath’s space and pass by?Night is kissed once of dawn and dies, and dayBut touches twilight and is rapt away.So may my love and her love meet once more,And meeting be divided as of yore.Yea, surely as the day-star loves the sunAnd when he hath risen is utterly undone,So is my love of her and hers of me—And its most sweetness bitter as the sea.”

“From too much love of livingFrom hope and fear set free,We thank with brief thanksgivingWhatever gods may beThat no life lives for ever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.Then star nor sun shall waken,Nor any change of light:Nor sound of waters shaken,Nor any sound or sight:Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,Nor days nor things diurnal;Only the sleep eternalIn an eternal night.”

“Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go,The wind and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?Come life, come death, not a word be said;Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?”

“Love, that is first and last of all things made,The light that has the living world for shade,The spirit that for temporal veil has onThe souls of all men woven in unison,One fiery raiment with all lives inwroughtAnd lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,And alway through new act and passion newShines the divine same body and beauty through,The body spiritual of fire and lightThat is to worldly noon as noon to night;Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of manAnd spirit within the flesh whence breath began;Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;Love, that is blood within the veins of time;That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,And with the pulse and motion of his breathThrough the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune liveThrough day and night of things alternative,Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,And ebb and flow of dying death and life:Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;Love that is root and fruit of terrene things;Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;Love, that what time his own hands guard his headThe whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;Love, that if once his own hands make his graveThe whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;Love, that for very life shall not be sold,Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;Love that is fire within thee and light above,And lives by grace of nothing but of love;Through many and lovely thoughts and much desireLed these twain to the life of tears and fire;Through many and lovely days and much delightLed these twain to the lifeless life of night.”

“At the door of life, by the gate of breath,There are worse things waiting for men than death.”