6 quotes
Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.
Empedocles on Etna (1852)
For both were faiths, and both are gone.
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)
But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon choked souls to fill.
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance, and nod, and bustle by,
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
New Poems (1867)
No, no! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg’d not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing—only he
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)