“I had liefer twenty years/Skip to the broken music of my brains/Than any broken music thou canst make.”

“Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,At last he beat his music out.There lives more faith in honest doubt,Believe me, than in half the creeds.He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,He would not make his judgment blind,He faced the spectres of the mindAnd laid them: thus he came at lengthTo find a stronger faith his own;And Power was with him in the night,Which makes the darkness and the light,And dwells not in the light alone,”

“Our little systems have their day;They have their day and cease to be…And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

“What hope is here for modern rhymeTo him, who turns a musing eyeOn songs, and deeds, and lives, that lieForeshorten'd in the tract of time?These mortal lullabies of painMay bind a book, may line a box,May serve to curl a maiden's locks;Or when a thousand moons shall waneA man upon a stall may find,And, passing, turn the page that tellsA grief, then changed to something else,Sung by a long-forgotten mind.But what of that? My darken'd waysShall ring with music all the same;To breathe my loss is more than fame,To utter love more sweet than praise.”

“But in her web she still delightsTo weave the mirror’s magic sights,For often thro’ the silent nightsA funeral, with plumes and lights,And music, went to Camelot:Or when the moon was overhead,Came two young lovers lately wed;“I am half-sick of shadows,” saidThe Lady of Shalott.”

“Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.”

“So word by word, and line by line,The dead man touch'd me from the past,And all at once it seem'd at lastThe living soul was flash'd on mine,And mine in his was wound, and whirl'dAbout empyreal heights of thought,And came on that which is, and caughtThe deep pulsations of the world,Æonian music measuring outThe steps of Time—the shocks of Chance--The blows of Death. At length my tranceWas cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.”