Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.

Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadside—are the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accurséd Ghost!

Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear As the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts, That work no harm, do terrify us more Than men in steel with bloody purposes. Death is not dreadful; 'tis the dread of death— We die whene'er we think of it!

When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host.

It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.

But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!