“Oh who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried.”

“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!”

“When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,Let him combat for that of his neighbours;Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,And get knocked on the head for his labours.To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,And is always as nobly requited;Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can,And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.”

“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!”

“You are 'the best of cut-throats:'--do not start;The phrase is Shakespeare's, and not misapplied:--War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,Unless her cause by Right be sanctified.If you have acted once a generous part,The World, not the World's masters, will decide,And I shall be delighted to learn who,Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?I am no flatterer--you've supped full of flattery:They say you like it too--'tis no great wonder:He whose whole life has been assault and battery,At last may get a little tired of thunder;And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, heMay like being praised for every lucky blunder;Called 'Saviour of the Nations'--not yet saved,And Europe's Liberator--still enslaved.I've done. Now go and dine from off the platePresented by the Prince of the Brazils,And send the sentinel before your gateA slice or two from your luxurious meals:He fought, but has not fed so well of late...”

“‎Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world, a boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence. Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality; and dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy. They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, they take a weight off our waking toils. They do divide our being; they become a portion of ourselves as of our time, and look like heralds of eternity. They pass like spirits of the past—they speak like sibyls of the future; they have power— the tyranny of pleasure and of pain. They make us what we were not—what they will, and shake us with the vision that’s gone by, the dread of vanished shadows—Are they so? Is not the past all shadow?—What are they? Creations of the mind?—The mind can make substances, and people planets of their own, with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed, perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.”

“Alas! They were so young, so beautiful, so lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour was that in which the heart is always full, annd, having o'er itself no further power, prompts deeds eternity can not annul.”