Richard Henry Stoddard (1825 – 1903)
U S critic and poet, was born in Hingham, Massachusetts.
Page 1 of 1
Not what we would, but what we must
Makes up the sum of living;
Heaven is both more and less than just
In taking and in giving.
A face at the window,
A tap on the pane;
Who is it that wants me
To-night in the rain?
Joy may be a miser,
But Sorrow’s purse is free.
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.
It beckons, I follow.
Good-by to the light,
I am going, O whither?
Out into the night.
Silence is the speech of love,
The music of the spheres above.
Children are the keys of Paradise … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.
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.
Page 1 of 1