“O where are you going with your love-locks flowingOn the west wind bellowing along this valley track?”“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”So they two went together in glowing August weather,The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float onThe air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.“Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?”“Oh, that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt>”“Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,Their scent comes rich and sickly?” “A scaled and hooded worm.””Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”“Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.”“Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest:This beaten way thou beatest, I fear is hell’s own track.”“Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.”

“Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,I love, as you would have me, God the most;Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless lookUnready to forego what I forsook;This say I, having counted up the cost,This, tho' I be the feeblest of God's host,The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.Yet while I love my God the most, I deemThat I can never love you overmuch;I love Him more, so let me love you too;Yea, as I apprehend it, love is suchI cannot love you if I love not Him.I cannot love Him if I love not you.”

“Yet come to me in dreams, that I may liveMy very life again though cold in death;Come back to me in dreams, that I may givePulse for pulse, breath for breath:Speak low, lean low,As long ago, my love, how long ago”

“O cousin Kate, my love was true,Your love was writ in sand:If he had fooled not me but you,If you had stood where i stand,He'd not have won me with his love,Nor bought me with his land;I would have spit into his faceAnd not have taken his hand.Yet I have a gift you have not got,And seem not like to get:For all your clothes and wedding-ringI've little doubt you fret.My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,Cling closer, closer yet:Your father would give lands for oneto wear his coronet”

“Golden head by golden head,Like two pigeons in one nestFolded in each other's wings,They lay down in their curtained bed:Like two blossoms on one stem,Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,Like two wands of ivoryTipped with gold for awful kings.Moon and stars gazed in at them,Wind sang to them lullaby,Lumbering owls forbore to fly,Not a bat flapped to and froRound their rest:Cheek to cheek and breast to breastLocked together in one nest.”

“Oh hang kitty; what has she to do with it? Come, be quick. Be quick. Where is your sash?”

“A Pause of ThoughtI looked for that which is not, nor can be,And hope deferred made my heart sick in truthBut years must pass before a hope of youthIs resigned utterly.I watched and waited with a steadfast will:And though the object seemed to flee awayThat I so longed for, ever day by dayI watched and waited still.Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;My expectation wearies and shall cease;I will resign it now and be at peace:Yet never gave it o'er.Sometimes I said: It is an empty nameI long for; to a name why should I giveThe peace of all the days I have to live?--Yet gave it all the same.Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfitFor healthy joy and salutary pain:Thou knowest the chase useless, and againTurnest to follow it.”