“Come to me in my dreams, and thenBy day I shall be well again!For so the night will more than payThe hopeless longings of the day.”

“Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

“No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!And the world hath the day, and must break thee,Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;And being lonely thou art miserable,For something has impair'd they spirit's strength,And dried its self-sufficing font of joy.”

“The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.”

“And each day brings it's pretty dust,Our soon-choked souls to fllAnd we forget because we must,And not because we will.”

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go.”

“The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits--on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand . . .”