“Our Euripides the human,With his droppings of warm tears,and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.”

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes;The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, -- he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God's future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!”

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

“Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart!Unlike our uses and our destinies...Thou, bethink thee, artA guest for queens to social pageantries,With gages from a hundred brighter eyesThan tears even can make mine...What hast though to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me,A poor, tired, wandering singer...”

“Men could not part us with their worldly jars,Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,--And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,We should but vow the faster for the stars.”

“...But the child's sob in silence curses deeper / Than the strong man in his wrath.”