In secret we met -In silence I grieve,That thy heart could forget,Thy spirit deceive.If I should meet theeAfter long years,How should I greet thee? -With silence and tears
The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange!How differently the world would men behold!
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
Wedded she some years, and to a manOf fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE’Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty…
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?The hearts bleed longest, and heals but to wear That which disfigures it.
All who joy would winMust share it — Happiness was born a twin.
But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
We are all the fools of time and terror: DaysSteal on us and steal from us; yet we live,Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature more
She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes…
I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
I will keep no further journal of that same hesternal torch‐light ; and, to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume…
There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the starsDid wander darkling in the eternal space.
Gwynned lies two days westwards; still further south, the weregeld calls. Mayhap with All-Father Woden’s favour, my deeds may yet inspire the skalds.
…methinks the older that one grows, Inclines us more to laugh the scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.
And yet methinks the older that one growsInclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.
But pomp and power alone are woman’s care,And where these are light Eros finds a feere;Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
The light of love, the purity of grace,The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole —And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!
If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.
A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.
the poor dog, in life the firmest friend, the first to welcome, the foremost to defend.
A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover — but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,Falling, like dew, upon a thought producesThat which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.
Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed there must be evil.
A woman being never at a loss… the devil always sticks by them.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,’Tis woman’s whole existence.
And yet, my girl, we weep in vain,In vain our fate in sighs deplore;Remembrance only can remain,But that, will make us weep the more.
But first on earth as vampire sentThy corpse shall from its tomb be rentThen gastly haunt thy native placeAnd suck the blood of all thy race
It is not in the storm or in the strifeWe feel benumbed and wish to be nor more,But in the after-silence on the shoreWhen all is lost except a little life.
Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,And marvel men should quit their easy chair,The toilsome way, and long, long leagues to trace,Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,And life that bloated Ease can never hope to share.
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,Sweet to the father is his first-born’s birth,Sweet is revenge–especially to women
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
As soon seek roses in December, ice in June,Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaffBelieve a woman or an epitaphOr any other thing that’s falseBefore you trust in critics.
I know that two and two make four – and should be glad to prove it too if I could – though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.
Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it, For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.