“In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.”

“She was like me in lineaments-- her eyesHer hair, her features, all, to the very toneEven of her voice, they said were like to mine;But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty;She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mindTo comprehend the universe: nor theseAlone, but with them gentler powers than mine,Pity, and smiles, and tears-- which I had not;And tenderness-- but that I had for her; Humility-- and that I never had. Her faults were mine-- her virtues were her own--I loved her, and destroy'd her!”

“I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all. ”

“The light of love, the purity of grace,The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole —And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!”

“She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes:Thus mellow’d to that tender lightWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.One shade the more, one ray the less,Had half impaired the nameless graceWhich waves in every raven tress,Or softly lightens o’er her face;Where thoughts serenely sweet expressHow pure, how dear their dwelling-place.And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,The smiles that win, the tints that glow,But tell of days in goodness spent,A mind at peace with allA heart whose love is innocent!”

“Yet I did love thee to the last,As ferverently as thou,Who didst not change through all the past,And canst not alter now.”

“T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an endTo strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,Particularly with a tiresome friend:Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;Dear is the helpless creature we defendAgainst the world; and dear the schoolboy spotWe ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone,Like Adam's recollection of his fall;The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked—all 's known—And Life yields nothing further to recallWorthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,No doubt in fable, as the unforgivenFire which Prometheus filched for us from Heaven.”