Richard Henry Stoddard

There is no death—the thing that we call death Is but another, sadder name for life, Which is itself an insufficient name, Faint recognition of that unknown Life— That Power whose shadow is the Universe.

Once when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. Each questioned each to know

I have been sojourning late Among the pleasant places of my Past, The green and quiet neighborhoods of Thought, In which I wandered in my wayward youth; With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her—ah when

Children are the keys of Paradise. … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.

Silence is the speech of love, The music of the spheres above.

There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again.

We love in others what we lack ourselves, And would be every thing but what we are.

All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty—Love!

A voice of greeting from the wind was sent, The mists enfolded me with soft white arms, The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms, And every little daisy in the grass Did look into my face and smile to see me …

Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!

Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands, Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands, Silent above the flowers, her children lost, Slain by the arrows of the early frost.

We have two lives about us, Two worlds in which we dwell; Within us, and without us, Alternate Heaven and Hell: Without, the somber Real, Within our hearts of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!