Our thoughts at least are ours

Stern daughter of the voice of God!

O Duty! if that name thou love

Who art a light to guide, a rod

To check the erring and reprove.

I look for ghosts; but none will force

Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said

That there was ever intercourse

Between the living and the dead.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that. mighty heart is lying still!

Our thoughts at least are ours.

There is a comfort in the strength of love;

'Twill make a thing endurable, which else

Would overset the brain, or break the heart.

The sky rejoices in the morning's birth.

As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low.

Its not in battles that from youth we train

The Governor who must be wise and good,

And temper with the sternness of the brain

Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.

Wisdom and spirit of the Universe!

Thou soul is the eternity of thought!

That giv'st to forms and images a breath

And everlasting motion! Not in vain

By day or star-light thus from by first dawn

Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me

The passions that build up our human soul,

Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,

But with high objects, with enduring things,

With life and nature, purifying thus

The elements of feeling and of thought,

And sanctifying, by such discipline

Both pain and fear, until we recognize

A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleam'd upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament.

That best portion of a good man's life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be not forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

Grief not, rather find,

Strength in what remains behind,

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be,

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of Human suffering,

In the faith that looks through death

In years that bring philophic mind

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!