But Icarus also flew

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

Four in the morning

The hour from night to day. The hour from side to side. The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks. The hour when earth betrays us. The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars. The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour. Blank, empty. The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants. And let five o'clock come if we're to go on living.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain______

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Forlorn !the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music : Do I wake or sleep?

The Lighthouse

Some days I’m the ocean.

Some days I’m the ship.

Tonight I’m the Lighthouse:

At the edge, alone and burning.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light;

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.