As you'll no doubt know, his novels were essentially nineteenth-century, while his poetry was more twentieth-, and while I really like his prose works I absolutely love a lot of his poetry. The Voice has always been one of my very favourite poems of all time.
But another one I've always liked (and I forgive the reference to the deity, which I'm sure is just conventional and proverbial), and which as I grow older I'm finding strikes a chord ever more strongly, is this one:
I Look into my Glass
I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”
For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
Great poetry makes you say, "Yes - that's just the way it feels." That poem does that for me. 100%.
