Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Sentiment: II. Life

Opportunity

William Blake (1757–1827)

HE who bends to himself a joy

Does the wingèd life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

If you trap the moment before it is ripe,

The tears of repentance you ’ll certainly wipe;

But if once you let the ripe moment go,

You can never wipe off the tears of woe.