“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!”

“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.”

“ Life In LoveEscape me?Never---Beloved!While I am I, and you are you,So long as the world contains us both,Me the loving and you the lothWhile the one eludes, must the other pursue.My life is a fault at last, I fear:It seems too much like a fate, indeed!Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.But what if I fail of my purpose here?It is but to keep the nerves at strain,To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,And, baffled, get up and begin again,---So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.While, look but once from your farthest boundAt me so deep in the dust and dark,No sooner the old hope goes to groundThan a new one, straight to the self-same mark,I shape me---EverRemoved!”

“I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights.”

“How well I know what I mean to doWhen the long dark Autumn evenings come,And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life’s November too!I shall be found by the fire, suppose,O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age,While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!”

“That moment she was mine, mine, fair,Perfectly pure and good: I foundA thing to do, and all her hairIn one long yellow string I woundThree times her little throat around,And strangled her. No pain felt she;I am quite sure she felt no pain.As a shut bud that holds a bee,I warily oped her lids: againLaughed the blue eyes without a stain.And I untightened the next tressAbout her neck; her cheek once moreBlushed bright beneath my burning kiss . . .”

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,Or what's a heaven for?”