Robert Browning Hamilton

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.

A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.

'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do.

No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.

Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.

So, fall asleep love, loved by me... for I know love, I am loved by thee.

All June I bound the rose in sheaves, Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves.

But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away.

God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.

Every one soon or late comes round by Rome.

Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed As, God be thanked! I do not.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.