I Silently Laugh At My Own Cenotaph,

In Each Human Heart Terror Survives The Ravin It Has Gorged: The Loftiest Fear All That They Would Disdain To Think Were True: Hypocrisy And Custom Make Their Minds The Fanes Of Many A Worship, Now Outworn. They Dare Not Devise Good For Man's Estate, And Yet They Know Not That They Do Not Dare.

A Husband And Wife Ought To Continue United So Long As They Love Each Other. Any Law Which Should Bind Them To Cohabitation For One Moment After The Decay Of Their Affection Would Be A Most Intolerable Tyranny, And The Most Unworthy Of Toleration.

True Love In This Differs From Gold And Clay, That To Divide Is Not To Take Away. Love Is Like Understanding, That Grows Bright, Gazing On Many Truths; 'tis Like Thy Light, Imagination! Which From Earth And Sky, And From The Depths Of Human Phantasy, As From A Thousand Prisms And Mirrors, Fills The Universe With Glorious Beams, And Kills Error, The Worm, With Many A Sun-like Arrow Of Its Reverberated Lightning.

A Poet Is A Nightingale, Who Sits In Darkness And Sings To Cheer Its Own Solitude With Sweet Sounds.

A Sensitive Plant In A Garden Grew, And The Young Winds Fed It With Silver Dew, And It Opened Its Fan Like Leaves To The Light, And Closed Them Beneath The Kisses Of Night.