'O dull, one-sided voice,' said I, 'Wilt thou make everything a lie, To flatter me that I may die? 'I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds. 'I cannot hide that some have striven, Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with Heaven: 'Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, And did not dream it was a dream'; 'But heard, by secret transport led, Ev'n in the charnels of the dead, The murmur of the fountain-head - 'Which did accomplish their desire, - Bore and forbore, and did not tire, Like Stephen, an unquenched fire. 'He heeded not reviling tones, Nor sold his heart to idle moans, Tho' cursed and scorn'd, and bruised with stones: 'But looking upward, full of grace, He pray'd, and from a happy place God's glory smote him on the face.'

'Cry, faint not: either Truth is born Beyond the polar gleam forlorn, Or in the gateways of the morn. 'Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope Beyond the furt…

I said, 'I toil beneath the curse, But, knowing not the universe, I fear to slide from bad to worse. 'And that, in seeking to undo One riddle, and to find the …

'That men with knowledge merely play'd, I told thee - hardly nigher made, Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade; 'Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind, Named…

God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways.

Quel que soit le souci que ta jeunesse endure, Laisse-la s'elargir, cette sainte blessure Que les noirs seraphins t'ont faite au fond du coeur ; Rien ne nous r…

The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-cane…