“She had a horror he would die at night.And sometimes when the light began to fadeShe could not keep from noticing how whiteThe birches looked — and then she would be afraid,Even with a lamp, to go about the houseAnd lock the windows; and as night wore onToward morning, if a dog howled, or a mouseSqueaked in the floor, long after it was goneHer flesh would sit awry on her. By dayShe would forget somewhat, and it would seemA silly thing to go with just this dreamAnd get a neighbor to come at night and stay.But it would strike her sometimes, making tea:_She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company._”

“Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would noteIn me a beauty that was never mine,How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line....”

“Strange how few, After all’s said and done, the things that areOf moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! “I had you and I have you now no more.” There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth That can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! “I had you and I have you now no more.”

“I would blossom if I were a rose.”

“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.”

“Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sunThat will not rise again.Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charityThat lifts a man a little above the beasts that run.That this could be!That I should live to seeMost vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,So fitted out with purple robe and crownTo stand among his betters! Face to faceWith outraged me in this once holy place,Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and huntedTruth was harboured out of danger,He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:The hills may shift, the waters may decline,Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,But never your love from me, your hand from mine.Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under.Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dreamYou have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came.”

“I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.”