Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves!

His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.

[L]ike thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born.

I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me- who knows how? To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

Just a tender sense of my own process, that holds something of my connection with the divine.

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.