Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.

A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull.

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, himself, his hungering neighbor and me.

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring.