“Spring and Fall: To a Young ChildMárgarét, are you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves, líke the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! ás the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It ís the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.”
“And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.”
“ Pied Beauty— "Glory be to God for dappled things--For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.All things counter, original, spare, strange;Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise Him.”
“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.”
“To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.”
“I bear a basket lined with grass;I am so light, I am so fair,That men must wonder as I passAnd at the basket that I bear,Where in a newly-drawn green litterSweet flowers I carry, -- sweets for bitter.Lilies I shew you, lilies none,None in Caesar’s gardens blow, --And a quince in hand, -- not oneIs set, because their buds not spring;Spring not, ‘cause world is wintering....”