Short Poems

What General has a good army in himself, has a good army;
He happy in himself, or she happy in herself, is happy,
But I tell you you cannot be happy by others, any more than you can
beget or conceive a child by others.

He is wisest who has the most caution,
He only wins who goes far enough.

Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that
will produce it and continue it.

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal;
And with him horse and foot--and parks of artillery,
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

These Carols, sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,
For completion, I dedicate to the Invisible World.

What are those of the known, but to ascend and enter the Unknown?
And what are those of life, but for Death?

The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.

Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,
fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,
To utter nothingness?

Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul--not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good
steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself
and become lost and dead.