Quotes from Bayard Taylor, "First Evening"

...years of quiet bliss To me, fast-rooted on paternal land, Mated, yet childless. He had journeyed far Beyond the borders of my life...

Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be? Who knows, far out upon the central sea, That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore Has set behind us, and will rise before: A past foretells a future...

Here he had read to me his tear-stained page Of sorrow... here would try To lay his burden in the hands of Song, And make the Poet bear the Lover's wrong, But still his heart impatiently would cry: "In vain, in vain! You cannot teach to flow In measured lines so measureless a woe. First learn to slay this wild beast of despair, Then from his harmless jaws your honey tear!"