The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Round the world for ever and aye.
‘The Forsaken Merman’ (1849) l. 43
This truth—to prove, and make thine own: ‘Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.’
‘Isolation. To Marguerite’ (1857) l. 29
Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still.
‘The Last Word’ (1867)
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
‘Lines written in Kensington Gardens’ (1852)
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth.
Lines on Wordsworth in ‘Memorial Verses, April 1850’ l. 47
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
‘A Memory Picture’ (1849)
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish ’twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
‘Morality’ (1852).
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
‘Parting’ (1852) l. 19
Hark! ah, the Nightingale!
The tawny-throated!
Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark—what pain!
‘Philomela’ (1853) l. 1