“All June, I bound the rose in sheaves.Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves,And strew them where Pauline may pass.She will not turn aside? Alas!Let them lie. Suppose they die?The chance was they might take her eye.How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string -- fold music's wing.Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!My whole life long I learned to love. This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion. -- Heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! Lose who may -- I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they.”

“My whole life long I learn'd to love,This hour my utmost art I prove.And speak my passion—— heaven or hell?She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!”

“When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens,I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.”

“Why should I say ‘Tis too soon to seek for heaven and think of death’? A flower may fade before ‘Tis noon and I this day may lose my breath.”

“My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.”

“Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also.”