My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thy happiness,--
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South, 15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night, 35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod. 60
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the Fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep? 80
_John Keats._
CCXXIII
_ODE TO A SKYLARK._
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 5
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 10
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied Joy whose race is just begun. 15
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight: 20
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 25
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not; 31
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 35
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 40
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 45
Like a glowworm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: 50
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. 55
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 60
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 65
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 70
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 75
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. 80
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 85
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn 91
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 95
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 100
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now! 105
_Percy Bysshe Shelley._
CCXXIV
_‘ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR.’_
’Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf; 5
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle; 10
No torch is kindled at its blaze--
A funeral pile.
The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share, 15
But wear the chain.
But ’tis not _thus_--and ’tis not _here_--
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor _now_,
Where glory decks the hero’s bier,
Or binds his brow. 20
The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.
Awake! (not Greece--she _is_ awake!) 25
Awake, my spirit! Think through _whom_
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!
Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood!--unto thee 30
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.
If thou regret’st thy youth, _why live_?
The land of honourable death
Is here:--up to the field, and give 35
Away thy breath!
Seek out-- less often sought than found--
A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest. 40
_Lord Byron._
CCXXV
_PESCHIERA._
What voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost?
‘’Tis better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all.’
The tricolor--a trampled rag 5
Lies, dirt and dust; the lines I track
By sentry boxes yellow-black,
Lead up to no Italian flag.
I see the Croat soldier stand
Upon the grass of your redoubts; 10
The eagle with his black wings flouts
The breadth and beauty of your land.
Yet not in vain, although in vain,
O men of Brescia, on the day
Of loss past hope, I heard you say 15
Your welcome to the noble pain.
You said, ‘Since so it is,--good bye
Sweet life, high hope; but whatsoe’er
May be, or must, no tongue shall dare
To tell, “The Lombard feared to die!”’ 20
You said, (there shall be answer fit,)
‘And if our children must obey,
They must; but thinking on this day,
’Twill less debase them to submit.’
You said, (oh, not in vain you said,) 25
‘Haste, brothers, haste, while yet we may;
The hours ebb fast of this one day,
When blood may yet be nobly shed.’
Ah! not for idle hatred, not
For honour, fame, nor self-applause, 30
But for the glory of the cause,
You did, what will not be forgot.
And though the stranger stand, ’tis true,
By force and fortune’s right he stands;
By fortune, which is in God’s hands, 35
And strength, which yet shall spring in you.
This voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost,
‘’Tis better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all.’ 40
_Arthur Hugh Clough._
CCXXVI
_LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM, PAINTED
BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT._
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! 5
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,
No mood, which season takes away, or brings: 10
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! then, if mine had been the painter’s hand
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land, 15
The consecration, and the poet’s dream,--
I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile,
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 20
Thou should’st have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years, a chronicle of heaven;
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.
A picture had it been of lasting ease, 25
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made; 30
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been,--’tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore; 35
A deep distress hath humanized my soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. 40
Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the friend,
If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
O ’tis a passionate work!--yet wise and well, 45
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves, 50
--Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time--
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known, 55
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:--
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 60
_William Wordsworth._
CCXXVII
_ODE ON A GRECIAN URN._
Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. 40
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 50
_John Keats._
CCXXVIII
_STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES._
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon’s transparent light:
The breath of the moist air is light 5
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean-floods,
The City’s voice itself is soft like solitude’s.
I see the Deep’s untrampled floor 10
With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone;
The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 15
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion--
How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion!
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around, 20
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned--
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure;
Others I see whom these surround; 25
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child, 30
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 35
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan; 40
They might lament--for I am one
Whom men love not, and yet regret;
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 45
_Percy Bysshe Shelley._
CCXXIX
_DESPONDENCY REBUKED._
Say not, the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 5
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 10
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 15
But westward, look, the land is bright.
_Arthur Hugh Clough._
CCXXX
_THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS._
Oft in the stilly night
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears 5
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken! 10
Thus in the stilly light
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all 15
The friends so linked together
I’ve seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone 20
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night 25
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
_Thomas Moore._
CCXXXI
_DIRGE._
If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love, and all its smart--
Then sleep, dear, sleep!
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your eyelashes; 5
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow
In Eastern sky.
But wilt thou cure thine heart 10
Of love, and all its smart--
Then die, dear, die!
’Tis deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose-bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye; 15
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love’s stars, thou’lt meet her
In Eastern sky.
_Thomas Lovell Beddoes._
CCXXXII
_LINES WRITTEN IN MY OWN ALBUM._
Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white,
A young probationer of light,
Thou wert, my soul, an album bright,
A spotless leaf; but thought, and care,
And friend and foe, in foul and fair, 5
Have ‘written strange defeatures’ there;
And Time with heaviest hand of all,
Like that fierce writing on the wall,
Hath stamped sad dates--he can’t recall.
And error, gilding worst designs-- 10
Like speckled snake that strays and shines--
Betrays his path by crooked lines;
And vice hath left his ugly blot;
And good resolves, a moment hot,
Fairly began--but finished not; 15
And fruitless, late remorse doth trace--
Like Hebrew lore a backward pace--
Her irrecoverable race.
Disjointed numbers; sense unknit;
Huge reams of folly; shreds of wit; 20
Compose the mingled mass of it.
My scalded eyes no longer brook
Upon this ink-blurred thing to look--
Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book.
_Charles Lamb._
CCXXXIII
_SONNET._
October’s gold is dim--the forests rot,
The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day
Is wrapt in damp. In mire of village-way
The hedgerow leaves are stampt, and, all forgot,
The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. 5
Autumn, among her drooping marigolds,
Weeps all her garnered fields and empty folds
And dripping orchards, plundered and forlorn.
The season is a dead one, and I die!
No more, no more for me the spring shall make 10
A resurrection in the earth, and take
The death from out her heart--O God, I die!
The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe
Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death!
_David Gray._
CCXXXIV
_SONNET._
Die down, O dismal day, and let me live;
And come, blue deeps, magnificently strewn
With coloured clouds--large, light, and fugitive--
By upper winds through pompous motions blown.
Now it is death in life--a vapour dense 5
Creeps round my window, till I cannot see
The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens
Shagging the mountain tops. O God! make free
This barren shackled earth, so deadly cold--
Breathe gently forth thy spring, till winter flies 10
In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold,
While she performs her customed charities.
I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare--
O God, for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air!
_David Gray._
CCXXXV
_SONNET._
O Winter, wilt thou never, never, go?
O Summer, but I weary for thy coming,
Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow,
And frugal bees, laboriously humming.
Now the east wind diseases the infirm, 5
And I must crouch in comers from rough weather;
Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm--
When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together,
And the large sun dips red behind the hills.
I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; 10
And the eternal moon, what time she fills
Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure,
With queenly motions of a bridal mood,
Through the white spaces of infinitude.
_David Gray._
CCXXXVI
_THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER._
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry, ‘’Weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, 5
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,
‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight; 10
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black:
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, 15
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his Father, and never want joy. 20
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work;
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
_William Blake._
CCXXXVII
_TO THE MOON._
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless,
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever changing, like a joyless eye 5
That finds no object worth its constancy?
_Percy Bysshe Shelley._
CCXXXVIII
_SONG._
If I had thought thou could’st have died,
I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou could’st mortal be.
It never through my mind had past 5
That time would e’er be o’er,
And I on thee should look my last,
And thou should’st smile no more!
And still upon that face I look,
And think ’twill smile again; 10
And still the thought I will not brook
That I must look in vain.
But when I speak thou dost not say,
What thou ne’er left’st unsaid;
And now I feel, as well I may, 15
Sweet Mary, thou art dead!
If thou would’st stay, e’en as thou art,
All cold, and all serene--
I still might press thy silent heart,
And where thy smiles have been! 20
While e’en thy chill, bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there--I lay thee in thy grave,
And I am now alone!
I do not think, where’er thou art, 25
Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart,
In thinking still of thee:
Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light ne’er seen before, 30
As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore!
_Charles Wolfe._
CCXXXIX
_ON ANOTHER’S SORROW._
Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, 5
And not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear? 10
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!
And can He, who smiles on all,
Hear the wren, with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care, 15
Hear the woes that infants bear?
And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast?
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant’s tear? 20
And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
Oh, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!
He doth give his joy to all: 25
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by: 30
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.
Oh! He gives to us his joy,
That our griefs He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone 35
He doth sit by us and moan.
_William Blake._
CCXL
_A DEAD ROSE._