Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence.

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells.

That kill the bloom before its time, And blanch, without the owner's crime, The most resplendent hair.

Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.

The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.