All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty—Love!

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

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 …

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!

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

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.