LOVE-WONDER

Or whether sad or joyous be her hours,
  Yet ever is she good and ever fair. 
  If she be glad, ’tis like a child’s wild air,
Who claps her hands above a heap of flowers;
And if she’s sad, it is no cloud that lowers,
  Rather a saint’s pale grace, whose golden hair
  Gleams like a crown, whose eyes are like a prayer
From some quiet window under minister towers.

But ah, Beloved, how shall I be taught
  To tell this truth in any rhymed line? 
For words and woven phrases fall to naught,
  Lost in the silence of one dream divine,
Wrapped in the beating wonder of this thought: 
  Even thou, who art so precious, thou art mine!

COMFORT

Comfort the sorrowful with watchful eyes
  In silence, for the tongue cannot avail. 
  Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the stale
Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries
To him whose grief outmasters all replies. 
  Only watch near him gently; do but bring
  The piteous help of silent ministering. 
Watchful and tender.  This alone is wise.

So shall thy presence and thine every motion,
The grateful knowledge of thy sad devotion
  Melt out the passionate hardness of his grief,
And break the flood-gates of thy pent-up soul. 
He shall bow down beneath thy mute control,
  And take thine hands, and weep, and find relief.

DESPONDENCY

Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
  The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
  With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
  And the huge presence of the world, at best
  A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Aged and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows? 
  Resting at times beside life’s thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
  We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
  Vain and phantasmal as a sick man’s dream.

OUTLOOK

Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
  But to stand free:  to keep the mind at brood
  On life’s deep meaning, nature’s altitude
On loveliness, and time’s mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
  Out of our eyes, considering only this,
  What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.

Though strife, ill fortune and harsh human need
  Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
  With agony; yet, patience—­there shall come
    Many great voices from life’s outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
    Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.