On Love:
Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
The spirit of sweet human love has sent
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
Her choicest gifts.
(From: Alastor: Or, The Spirit Of Solitude)
All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. …… They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now but those who feel it most Are happier still.
Heaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
All things are sold the very light of heaven is venal earth’s unsparing gifts of love, the smallest and most despicable things that lurk in the abysses of the deep, all objects of our life, even life itself, and the poor pittance which the laws allow of liberty, the fellowship of man, those duties which his heart of human love should urge him to perform instinctively, are bought and sold as in a public mart of not disguising selfishness, that sets on each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
On Life:
Life may change, but it may fly not Hope may vanish, but can die not Truth be veiled, but still it burneth Love repulsed, – but it returneth.
On Death:
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
He lives, he wakes -’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.
(From: Adonais)
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night.
(From: A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire)