“A glimpse through an interstice caught, of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner…”

“Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart; you’d have me know of you your least transgression, and so the intimate places of your heart, kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.…”

“A little black thing among the snow, crying “weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” “They are both gone up to the church to pray”…”

“No longer mourn for me when I am dead than you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell…”

“Half of my life is gone, and I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth, to build some tower of song with lofty parapet.…”

“Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.…”

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love…”

“If I had but two little wings and were a little feathery bird, to you I’d fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle things, and I stay here.…”

“It’s all a farce, — these tales they tell about the breezes sighing, and moans astir o’er field and dell, because the year is dying.…”

“To one who has been long in city pent, ’tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament.…”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

“When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me; plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree…”

“Out through the fields and the woods and over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view and looked at the world, and descended;…”

“They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours commiserating each the other’s woe, to mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.…”