Classic Poem

What does the world think? What my sense shall make it;
There is no world but what is in my mind;
It has no truth, but as I choose to take it;
It cannot hurt, if I but call it kind:
I am alone, and all the shapes of earth
Are empty—till I bring their life to birth.

The winds live not: I listen, and they sing to me,
Motionless hills are gods with whom I walk;
Sunshine and night have souls, for what they bring to me;
Children are all the joy I hear them talk.
The earth is full of echoes; that can give
Life to my heart,—if I but let them live.

Men cannot move me, for their much repeating
A pettiness of shape they share with mine;
Shades of my semblance, shattered in their meeting
With deeper shadows on my heart's design:
I only live; and all mankind is naught,
But as I lend it being in my thought.

Through this blue dusk the soulless stars are wheeling
To meet the soulless lights from the blue plain;
One lamp for every nest of mortals stealing
Back to their nothingness of life again.
In the wide spaces of this lonely night
Candle and star live only in my sight.