“I arise from dreams of thee,And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, Sweet!”
“I am the daughter of Earth and Water,And the nursling of the Sky;I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;I change, but I cannot die.For after the rain when with never a stainThe pavilion of Heaven is bare,And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleamsBuild up the blue dome of air,I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,And out of the caverns of rain,Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,I arise and unbuild it again.”
“Good-night? ah! no; the hour is illWhich severs those it should unite;Let us remain together still,Then it will be good night.How can I call the lone night good,Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?Be it not said, thought, understood --Then it will be -- good night.To hearts which near each other moveFrom evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.”
“Music, When Soft Voices DieMusic, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.”
“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”
“Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.”
“[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms.”