The artist who this idol wrought

To echo all harmonious thought,

Fell'd a tree, while on the steep

The woods were in their winter sleep,

Rock'd in that repose divine

On the wind-swept Apennine;

And dreaming, some of Autumn past,

And some of Spring approaching fast,

And some of April buds and showers,

And some of songs in July bowers,

And all of love: And so this tree,--

Oh that such our death may be!--

Died in sleep, and felt no pain,

To live in happier form again:

From which, beneath heaven's fairest star,

The artist wrought this loved Guitar;

And taught it justly to reply

To all who question skilfully

In language gentle as thine own;

Whispering in enamour'd tone

Sweet oracles of woods and dells,

And summer winds in sylvan cells:

--For it had learnt all harmonies

Of the plains and of the skies,

Of the forests and the mountains,

And the many-voicéd fountains;

The clearest echoes of the hills,

The softest notes of falling rills,

The melodies of birds and bees,

The murmuring of summer seas,

And pattering rain, and breathing dew,

And airs of evening; and it knew

That seldom-heard mysterious sound

Which, driven on its diurnal round,

As it floats through boundless day,

Our world enkindles on its way:

--All this it knows, but will not tell

To those who cannot question well

The Spirit that inhabits it;

It talks according to the wit

Of its companions; and no more

Is heard than has been felt before

By those who tempt it to betray

These secrets of an elder day.

But, sweetly as its answers will

Flatter hands of perfect skill,

It keeps its highest holiest tone

For our beloved Friend alone.

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCI

_THE DAFFODILS_

I wander'd lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:--

A Poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company!

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCII

_TO THE DAISY_

With little here to do or see

Of things that in the great world be,

Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee

For thou art worthy,

Thou unassuming Common-place

Of Nature, with that homely face,

And yet with something of a grace

Which Love makes for thee!

Oft on the dappled turf at ease

I sit and play with similes,

Loose types of things through all degrees,

Thoughts of thy raising;

And many a fond and idle name

I give to thee, for praise or blame

As is the humour of the game,

While I am gazing.

A nun demure, of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,

In thy simplicity the sport

Of all temptations;

A queen in crown of rubies drest;

A starveling in a scanty vest;

Are all, as seems to suit thee best,

Thy appellations.

A little Cyclops, with one eye

Staring to threaten and defy,

That thought comes next--and instantly

The freak is over,

The shape will vanish, and behold!

A silver shield with boss of gold

That spreads itself, some faery bold

In fight to cover.

I see thee glittering from afar--

And then thou art a pretty star,

Not quite so fair as many are

In heaven above thee!

Yet like a star, with glittering crest,

Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;--

May peace come never to his nest

Who shall reprove thee!

Sweet Flower! for by that name at last

When all my reveries are past

I call thee, and to that cleave fast,

Sweet silent Creature!

That breath'st with me in sun and air,

Do thou, as thou art wont, repair

My heart with gladness, and a share

Of thy meek nature!

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCIII

_ODE TO AUTUMN_

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barréd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

_J. Keats_

CCCIV

_ODE TO WINTER_

_Germany, December, 1800_

When first the fiery-mantled Sun

His heavenly race began to run,

Round the earth and ocean blue

His children four the Seasons flew.

First, in green apparel dancing,

The young Spring smiled with angel-grace;

Rosy Summer next advancing,

Rush'd into her sire's embrace--

Her bright-hair'd sire, who bade her keep

For ever nearest to his smiles,

On Calpe's olive-shaded steep

Or India's citron-cover'd isles:

More remote, and buxom-brown,

The Queen of vintage bow'd before his throne;

A rich pomegranate gemm'd her crown,

A ripe sheaf bound her zone.

But howling Winter fled afar

To hills that prop the polar star;

And loves on deer-borne car to ride

With barren darkness by his side,

Round the shore where loud Lofoden

Whirls to death the roaring whale;

Round the hall where Runic Odin

Howls his war-song to the gale;

Save when adown the ravaged globe

He travels on his native storm,

Deflowering Nature's grassy robe

And trampling on her faded form:--

Till light's returning Lord assume

The shaft that drives him to his polar field,

Of power to pierce his raven plume

And crystal-cover'd shield.

Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear

The Lapland drum delights to hear,

When Frenzy with her blood-shot eye

Implores thy dreadful deity--

Archangel! Power of desolation!

Fast descending as thou art,

Say, hath mortal invocation

Spells to touch thy stony heart?

Then, sullen Winter! hear my prayer,

And gently rule the ruin'd year;

Nor chill the wanderer's bosom bare

Nor freeze the wretch's falling tear:

To shuddering Want's unmantled bed

Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lend,

And gently on the orphan head

Of Innocence descend.

But chiefly spare, O king of clouds!

The sailor on his airy shrouds,

When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,

And spectres walk along the deep.

Milder yet thy snowy breezes

Pour on yonder tented shores,

Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,

Or the dark-brown Danube roars.

Oh, winds of Winter! list ye there

To many a deep and dying groan?

Or start, ye demons of the midnight air,

At shrieks and thunders louder than your own?

Alas! ev'n your unhallow'd breath

May spare the victim fallen low;

But Man will ask no truce to death,--

No bounds to human woe.

_T. Campbell_

CCCV

_YARROW UNVISITED_

_1803_

From Stirling Castle we had seen

The mazy Forth unravell'd,

Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay,

And with the Tweed had travell'd;

And when we came to Clovenford,

Then said my 'winsome Marrow,'

'Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside,

And see the Braes of Yarrow.'

'Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town,

Who have been buying, selling,

Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own,

Each maiden to her dwelling!

On Yarrow's banks let herons feed,

Hares couch, and rabbits burrow;

But we will downward with the Tweed,

Nor turn aside to Yarrow.

'There's Gala Water, Leader Haughs,

Both lying right before us;

And Dryburgh, where with chiming Tweed

The lintwhites sing in chorus;

There's pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land

Made blithe with plough and harrow:

Why throw away a needful day

To go in search of Yarrow?

'What's Yarrow but a river bare

That glides the dark hills under?

There are a thousand such elsewhere

As worthy of your wonder.'

--Strange words they seem'd of slight and scorn;

My True-love sigh'd for sorrow,

And look'd me in the face, to think

I thus could speak of Yarrow!

'O green,' said I, 'are Yarrow's holms,

And sweet is Yarrow flowing!

Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,

But we will leave it growing.

O'er hilly path and open strath

We'll wander Scotland thorough;

But, though so near, we will not turn

Into the dale of Yarrow.

'Let beeves and home-bred kine partake

The sweets of Burn-mill meadow;

The swan on still Saint Mary's Lake

Float double, swan and shadow!

We will not see them; will not go

To-day, nor yet to-morrow;

Enough if in our hearts we know

There's such a place as Yarrow.

'Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown!

It must, or we shall rue it:

We have a vision of our own,

Ah! why should we undo it?

The treasured dreams of times long past,

We'll keep them, winsome Marrow!

For when we're there, although 'tis fair,

'Twill be another Yarrow!

'If Care with freezing years should come

And wandering seem but folly,--

Should we be loth to stir from home,

And yet be melancholy;

Should life be dull, and spirits low,

'Twill soothe us in our sorrow

That earth has something yet to show,

The bonny holms of Yarrow!'

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCVI

_YARROW VISITED_

_September, 1814_

And is this--Yarrow?--This the stream

Of which my fancy cherish'd

So faithfully, a waking dream,

An image that hath perish'd?

O that some minstrel's harp were near

To utter notes of gladness

And chase this silence from the air,

That fills my heart with sadness!

Yet why?--a silvery current flows

With uncontroll'd meanderings;

Nor have these eyes by greener hills

Been soothed, in all my wanderings.

And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake

Is visibly delighted;

For not a feature of those hills

Is in the mirror slighted.

A blue sky bends o'er Yarrow Vale,

Save where that pearly whiteness

Is round the rising sun diffused,

A tender hazy brightness;

Mild dawn of promise! that excludes

All profitless dejection;

Though not unwilling here to admit

A pensive recollection.

Where was it that the famous Flower

Of Yarrow Vale lay bleeding?

His bed perchance was yon smooth mound

On which the herd is feeding:

And haply from this crystal pool,

Now peaceful as the morning,

The Water-wraith ascended thrice,

And gave his doleful warning.

Delicious is the lay that sings

The haunts of happy lovers,

The path that leads them to the grove,

The leafy grove that covers:

And pity sanctifies the verse

That paints, by strength of sorrow,

The unconquerable strength of love;

Bear witness, rueful Yarrow!

But thou that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation:

Meek loveliness is round thee spread,

A softness still and holy:

The grace of forest charms decay'd,

And pastoral melancholy.

That region left, the vale unfolds

Rich groves of lofty stature,

With Yarrow winding through the pomp

Of cultivated nature;

And rising from those lofty groves

Behold a ruin hoary,

The shatter'd front of Newark's towers,

Renown'd in Border story.

Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom,

For sportive youth to stray in,

For manhood to enjoy his strength,

And age to wear away in!

Yon cottage seems a bower of bliss,

A covert for protection

Of tender thoughts that nestle there--

The brood of chaste affection.

How sweet on this autumnal day

The wild-wood fruits to gather,

And on my True-love's forehead plant

A crest of blooming heather!

And what if I enwreathed my own?

'Twere no offence to reason;

The sober hills thus deck their brows

To meet the wintry season.

I see--but not by sight alone,

Loved Yarrow, have I won thee;

A ray of Fancy still survives--

Her sunshine plays upon thee!

Thy ever-youthful waters keep

A course of lively pleasure;

And gladsome notes my lips can breathe

Accordant to the measure.

The vapours linger round the heights,

They melt, and soon must vanish;

One hour is theirs, nor more is mine--

Sad thought! which I would banish,

But that I know, where'er I go,

Thy genuine image, Yarrow!

Will dwell with me, to heighten joy,

And cheer my mind in sorrow.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCVII

_THE INVITATION_

Best and brightest, come away,--

Fairer far than this fair Day,

Which, like thee, to those in sorrow

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow

To the rough year just awake

In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn Spring

Through the winter wandering,

Found, it seems, the halcyon morn

To hoar February born;

Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,

It kiss'd the forehead of the earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,

And waked to music all their fountains,

And breathed upon the frozen mountains,

And like a prophetess of May

Strew'd flowers upon the barren way,

Making the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild wood and the downs--

To the silent wilderness

Where the soul need not repress

Its music, lest it should not find

An echo in another's mind,

While the touch of Nature's art

Harmonizes heart to heart.

Radiant Sister of the Day

Awake! arise! and come away!

To the wild woods and the plains,

To the pools where winter rains

Image all their roof of leaves,

Where the pine its garland weaves

Of sapless green, and ivy dun,

Round stems that never kiss the sun;

Where the lawns and pastures be

And the sandhills of the sea;

Where the melting hoar-frost wets

The daisy-star that never sets,

And wind-flowers and violets

Which yet join not scent to hue

Crown the pale year weak and new;

When the night is left behind

In the deep east, dim and blind,

And the blue noon is over us,

And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,

And all things seem only one

In the universal Sun.

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCVIII

_THE RECOLLECTION_

Now the last day of many days

All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead:

Rise, Memory, and write its praise!

Up--to thy wonted work! come, trace

The epitaph of glory fled,

For now the earth has changed its face,

A frown is on the heaven's brow.

We wander'd to the Pine Forest

That skirts the Ocean's foam;

The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,

The clouds were gone to play,

And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of heaven lay;

It seem'd as if the hour were one

Sent from beyond the skies

Which scatter'd from above the sun

A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood

The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude

As serpents interlaced,--

And soothed by every azure breath

That under heaven is blown,

To harmonies and hues beneath,

As tender as its own:

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep

Like green waves on the sea,

As still as in the silent deep

The ocean-woods may be.

How calm it was!--The silence there

By such a chain was bound,

That even the busy woodpecker

Made stiller with her sound

The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew

With its soft motion made not less

The calm that round us grew.

There seem'd, from the remotest seat

Of the white mountain waste

To the soft flower beneath our feet,

A magic circle traced,--

A spirit interfused around,

A thrilling silent life;

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife;--

And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there

Was one fair form that fill'd with love

The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie

Under the forest bough;

Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky

Gulf'd in a world below;

A firmament of purple light

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night

And purer than the day--

In which the lovely forests grew

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,

And through the dark-green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen

Were imaged in the water's love

Of that fair forest green:

And all was interfused beneath

With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,

A softer day below.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest;

Until an envious wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought

Which from the mind's too faithful eye

Blots one dear image out.

--Though thou art ever fair and kind,

The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind

Than calm in waters seen!

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCIX

_BY THE SEA_

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea:

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCX

_SONG TO THE EVENING STAR_

Star that bringest home the bee,

And sett'st the weary labourer free!

If any star shed peace, 'tis Thou

That send'st it from above,

Appearing when Heaven's breath and brow

Are sweet as hers we love.

Come to the luxuriant skies,

Whilst the landscape's odours rise,

Whilst far-off lowing herds are heard

And songs when toil is done,

From cottages whose smoke unstirr'd

Curls yellow in the sun.

Star of love's soft interviews,

Parted lovers on thee muse;

Their remembrancer in Heaven

Of thrilling vows thou art,

Too delicious to be riven

By absence from the heart.

_T. Campbell_

CCCXI

_DATUR HORA QUIETI_

The sun upon the lake is low,

The wild birds hush their song,

The hills have evening's deepest glow,

Yet Leonard tarries long.

Now all whom varied toil and care

From home and love divide,

In the calm sunset may repair

Each to the loved one's side.

The noble dame, on turret high,

Who waits her gallant knight,

Looks to the western beam to spy

The flash of armour bright.

The village maid, with hand on brow

The level ray to shade,

Upon the footpath watches now

For Colin's darkening plaid.

Now to their mates the wild swans row,

By day they swam apart,

And to the thicket wanders slow

The hind beside the hart.

The woodlark at his partner's side

Twitters his closing song--

All meet whom day and care divide,

But Leonard tarries long!

_Sir W. Scott_

CCCXII

_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

That finds no object worth its constancy?

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXIII

_TO SLEEP_

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees

Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,

Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky:

I've thought of all by turns, and yet do lie

Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies

Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees,

And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,

And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:

So do not let me wear to-night away:

Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?

Come, blesséd barrier between day and day,

Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXIV

_THE SOLDIER'S DREAM_

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,

And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;

And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd,

The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw

By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,

At the dead of the night a sweet Vision I saw;

And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array

Far, far, I had roam'd on a desolate track:

'Twas Autumn,--and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;

I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore

From my home and my weeping friends never to part;

My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart.

'Stay--stay with us!--rest!--thou art weary and worn!'--

And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;--

But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,

And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

_T. Campbell_

CCCXV

_A DREAM OF THE UNKNOWN_

I dream'd that as I wander'd by the way

Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,

And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring

Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kiss'd it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,

When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd May,

And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine

Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day;

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;

And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold,

Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank'd with white,

And starry river-buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers

Were mingled or opposed, the like array

Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours

Within my hand,--and then, elate and gay,

I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come

That I might there present it--O! to Whom?

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXVI

_KUBLA KHAN_

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she play'd,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

_S. T. Coleridge_

CCCXVII

_THE INNER VISION_

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes

To pace the ground, if path be there or none,

While a fair region round the traveller lies

Which he forbears again to look upon;

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,

The work of Fancy, or some happy tone

Of meditation, slipping in between

The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

--If Thought and Love desert us, from that day

Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:

With Thought and Love companions of our way--

Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,--

The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews

Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXVIII

_THE REALM OF FANCY_

Ever let the Fancy roam;

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let wingéd Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Summer's joys are spoilt by use,

And the enjoying of the Spring

Fades as does its blossoming;

Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,

Blushing through the mist and dew,

Cloys with tasting: What do then?

Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear faggot blazes bright,

Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the cakéd snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;

When the Night doth meet the Noon

In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

Sit thee there, and send abroad,

With a mind self-overaw'd,

Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!

She has vassals to attend her:

She will bring, in spite of frost,

Beauties that the earth hath lost;

She will bring thee, all together,

All delights of summer weather;

All the buds and bells of May,

From dewy sward or thorny spray;

All the heapéd Autumn's wealth,

With a still, mysterious stealth:

She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it:--thou shalt hear

Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reapéd corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn:

And, in the same moment--hark!

'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

Foraging for sticks and straw.

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold

The daisy and the marigold;

White-plumed lilies, and the first

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;

Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

And every leaf, and every flower

Pearléd with the self-same shower.

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep

Meagre from its celléd sleep;

And the snake all winter-thin

Cast on sunny bank its skin;

Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see

Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,

When the hen-bird's wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering,

While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Everything is spoilt by use:

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,

Too much gazed at? Where's the maid

Whose lip mature is ever new?

Where's the eye, however blue,

Doth not weary? Where's the face

One would meet in every place?

Where's the voice, however soft,

One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.

Let then wingéd Fancy find

Thee a mistress to thy mind:

Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter,

Ere the God of Torment taught her

How to frown and how to chide;

With a waist and with a side

White as Hebe's, when her zone

Slipt its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid.--Break the mesh

Of the Fancy's silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string,

And such joys as these she'll bring.

--Let the wingéd Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

_J. Keats_

CCCXIX

_WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING_

I heard a thousand blended notes

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp'd and play'd,

Their thoughts I cannot measure,--

But the least motion which they made

It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What Man has made of Man?

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXX

_RUTH: OR THE INFLUENCES OF NATURE_

When Ruth was left half desolate

Her father took another mate;

And Ruth, not seven years old,

A slighted child, at her own will

Went wandering over dale and hill,

In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,

And music from that pipe could draw

Like sounds of winds and floods;

Had built a bower upon the green,

As if she from her birth had been

An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone

She seem'd to live; her thoughts her own;

Herself her own delight:

Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay;

And passing thus the live-long day,

She grew to woman's height.

There came a youth from Georgia's shore--

A military casque he wore

With splendid feathers drest;

He brought them from the Cherokees;

The feathers nodded in the breeze

And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:

But no! he spake the English tongue

And bore a soldier's name;

And, when America was free

From battle and from jeopardy,

He 'cross the ocean came.

With hues of genius on his cheek,

In finest tones the youth could speak:

--While he was yet a boy

The moon, the glory of the sun,

And streams that murmur as they run

Had been his dearest joy.

He was a lovely youth! I guess

The panther in the wilderness

Was not so fair as he;

And when he chose to sport and play,

No dolphin ever was so gay

Upon the tropic sea.

Among the Indians he had fought;

And with him many tales he brought

Of pleasure and of fear;

Such tales as, told to any maid

By such a youth, in the green shade,

Were perilous to hear.

He told of girls, a happy rout!

Who quit their fold with dance and shout,

Their pleasant Indian town,

To gather strawberries all day long;

Returning with a choral song

When daylight is gone down.

He spake of plants that hourly change

Their blossoms, through a boundless range

Of intermingling hues;

With budding, fading, faded flowers,

They stand the wonder of the bowers

From morn to evening dews.

He told of the magnolia, spread

High as a cloud, high over head!

The cypress and her spire;

--Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam

Cover a hundred leagues, and seem

To set the hills on fire.

The youth of green savannahs spake,

And many an endless, endless lake

With all its fairy crowds

Of islands, that together lie

As quietly as spots of sky

Among the evening clouds.

'How pleasant,' then he said, 'it were

A fisher or a hunter there,

In sunshine or in shade

To wander with an easy mind,

And build a household fire, and find

A home in every glade!

'What days and what bright years! Ah me!

Our life were life indeed, with thee

So pass'd in quiet bliss;

And all the while,' said he, 'to know

That we were in a world of woe,

On such an earth as this!'

And then he sometimes interwove

Fond thoughts about a father's love,

'For there,' said he, 'are spun

Around the heart such tender ties,

That our own children to our eyes

Are dearer than the sun.

'Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me

My helpmate in the woods to be,

Our shed at night to rear;

Or run, my own adopted bride,

A sylvan huntress at my side,

And drive the flying deer!

'Beloved Ruth!'--No more he said,

The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed

A solitary tear:

She thought again--and did agree

With him to sail across the sea,

And drive the flying deer.

'And now, as fitting is and right,

We in the church our faith will plight,

A husband and a wife.'

Even so they did; and I may say

That to sweet Ruth that happy day

Was more than human life.

Through dream and vision did she sink,

Delighted all the while to think

That, on those lonesome floods

And green savannahs, she should share

His board with lawful joy, and bear

His name in the wild woods.

But, as you have before been told,

This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,

And with his dancing crest

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roam'd about, with vagrant bands

Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,

The tumult of a tropic sky

Might well be dangerous food

For him, a youth to whom was given

So much of earth--so much of heaven,

And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those climes he found

Irregular in sight or sound

Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seem'd allied

To his own powers, and justified

The workings of his heart.

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,

The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,--

Fair trees and gorgeous flowers;

The breezes their own languor lent;

The stars had feelings, which they sent

Into those favour'd bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween

That sometimes there did intervene

Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions link'd to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment.

But ill he lived, much evil saw,

With men to whom no better law

Nor better life was known;

Deliberately and undeceived

Those wild men's vices he received,

And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame

Were thus impair'd, and he became

The slave of low desires:

A man who without self-control

Would seek what the degraded soul

Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feign'd delight

Had woo'd the maiden, day and night

Had loved her, night and morn:

What could he less than love a maid

Whose heart with so much nature play'd--

So kind and so forlorn?

Sometimes most earnestly he said,

'O Ruth! I have been worse than dead;

False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain

Encompass'd me on every side

When I, in confidence and pride,

Had cross'd the Atlantic main.

'Before me shone a glorious world

Fresh as a banner bright, unfurl'd

To music suddenly:

I look'd upon those hills and plains,

And seem'd as if let loose from chains

To live at liberty!

'No more of this--for now, by thee,

Dear Ruth! more happily set free,

With nobler zeal I burn;

My soul from darkness is released

Like the whole sky when to the east

The morning doth return.'

Full soon that better mind was gone;

No hope, no wish remain'd, not one,--

They stirr'd him now no more;

New objects did new pleasure give,

And once again he wish'd to live

As lawless as before.

Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared,

They for the voyage were prepared,

And went to the sea-shore:

But, when they thither came, the youth

Deserted his poor bride, and Ruth

Could never find him more.

God help thee, Ruth!--Such pains she had

That she in half a year was mad

And in a prison housed;

And there, with many a doleful song

Made of wild words, her cup of wrong

She fearfully caroused.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,

Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,

Nor pastimes of the May,

--They all were with her in her cell;

And a clear brook with cheerful knell

Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,

There came a respite to her pain;

She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought;

And where it liked her best she sought

Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breathed again:

The master-current of her brain

Ran permanent and free;

And, coming to the banks of Tone,

There did she rest; and dwell alone

Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her pain, the tools

That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools,

And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves--she loved them still,

Nor ever tax'd them with the ill

Which had been done to her.

A barn her Winter bed supplies;

But, till the warmth of Summer skies

And Summer days is gone,

(And all do in this tale agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,

And other home hath none.

An innocent life, yet far astray!

And Ruth will, long before her day,

Be broken down and old.

Sore aches she needs must have! but less

Of mind, than body's wretchedness,

From damp, and rain, and cold.

If she is prest by want of food

She from her dwelling in the wood

Repairs to a road-side;

And there she begs at one steep place,

Where up and down with easy pace

The horsemen-travellers ride.

That oaten pipe of hers is mute

Or thrown away: but with a flute

Her loneliness she cheers;

This flute, made of a hemlock stalk,

At evening in his homeward walk

The Quantock woodman hears.

I, too, have pass'd her on the hills

Setting her little water-mills

By spouts and fountains wild--

Such small machinery as she turn'd

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd,--

A young and happy child!

Farewell! and when thy days are told,

Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow'd mould

Thy corpse shall buried be;

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,

And all the congregation sing

A Christian psalm for thee.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXI

_WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS_

Many a green isle needs must be

In the deep wide sea of Misery,

Or the mariner, worn and wan,

Never thus could voyage on

Day and night, and night and day,

Drifting on his dreary way,

With the solid darkness black

Closing round his vessel's track;

Whilst above, the sunless sky

Big with clouds, hangs heavily,

And behind the tempest fleet

Hurries on with lightning feet,

Riving sail, and cord, and plank,

Till the ship has almost drank

Death from the o'er-brimming deep;

And sinks down, down, like that sleep

When the dreamer seems to be

Weltering through eternity;

And the dim low line before

Of a dark and distant shore

Still recedes, as ever still

Longing with divided will,

But no power to seek or shun,

He is ever drifted on

O'er the unreposing wave,

To the haven of the grave.

Ah, many flowering islands lie

In the waters of wide Agony:

To such a one this morn was led

My bark, by soft winds piloted.

--'Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the paean

With which the legion'd rooks did hail

The Sun's uprise majestical:

Gathering round with wings all hoar,

Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven

Bursts; and then,--as clouds of even

Fleck'd with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,--

So their plumes of purple grain

Starr'd with drops of golden rain

Gleam above the sunlight woods,

As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale

Through the broken mist they sail;

And the vapours cloven and gleaming

Follow down the dark steep streaming,

Till all is bright, and clear, and still

Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea

The waveless plain of Lombardy,

Bounded by the vaporous air,

Islanded by cities fair;

Underneath Day's azure eyes,

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,--

A peopled labyrinth of walls,

Amphitrite's destined halls,

Which her hoary sire now paves

With his blue and beaming waves.

Lo! the sun upsprings behind,

Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined

On the level quivering line

Of the waters crystalline;

And before that chasm of light,

As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

Shine like obelisks of fire,

Pointing with inconstant motion

From the altar of dark ocean

To the sapphire-tinted skies;

As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise

As to pierce the dome of gold

Where Apollo spoke of old.

Sun-girt City! thou hast been

Ocean's child, and then his queen;

Now is come a darker day,

And thou soon must be his prey,

If the power that raised thee here

Hallow so thy watery bier.

A less drear ruin then than now,

With thy conquest-branded brow

Stooping to the slave of slaves

From thy throne among the waves

Wilt thou be,--when the sea-mew

Flies, as once before if flew,

O'er thine isles depopulate,

And all is in its ancient state,

Save where many a palace-gate

With green sea-flowers overgrown

Like a rock of ocean's own,

Topples o'er the abandon'd sea

As the tides change sullenly.

The fisher on his watery way

Wandering at the close of day,

Will spread his sail and seize his oar

Till he pass the gloomy shore,

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep,

Bursting o'er the starlight deep,

Lead a rapid masque of death

O'er the waters of his path.

Noon descends around me now:

'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,

When a soft and purple mist

Like a vaporous amethyst,

Or an air-dissolvéd star

Mingling light and fragrance, far

From the curved horizon's bound

To the point of heaven's profound,

Fills the overflowing sky;

And the plains that silent lie

Underneath; the leaves unsodden

Where the infant Frost has trodden

With his morning-wingéd feet

Whose bright print is gleaming yet;

And the red and golden vines

Piercing with their trellised lines

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;

The dun and bladed grass no less,

Pointing from this hoary tower

In the windless air; the flower

Glimmering at my feet; the line

Of the olive-sandall'd Apennine

In the south dimly islanded;

And the Alps, whose snows are spread

High between the clouds and sun;

And of living things each one;

And my spirit, which so long

Darken'd this swift stream of song,--

Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky;

Be it love, light, harmony,

Odour, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,

Or the mind which feeds this verse,

Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon

Autumn's evening meets me soon,

Leading the infantine moon

And that one star, which to her

Almost seems to minister

Half the crimson light she brings

From the sunset's radiant springs:

And the soft dreams of the morn

(Which like wingéd winds had borne

To that silent isle, which lies

'Mid remember'd agonies,

The frail bark of this lone being),

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,

And its ancient pilot, Pain,

Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be

In the sea of Life and Agony:

Other spirits float and flee

O'er that gulf: Ev'n now, perhaps,

On some rock the wild wave wraps,

With folded wings they waiting sit

For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove;

Where for me, and those I love,

May a windless bower be built,

Far from passion, pain, and guilt,

In a dell 'mid lawny hills

Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

And soft sunshine, and the sound

Of old forests echoing round,

And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine.

--We may live so happy there,

That the Spirits of the Air

Envying us, may ev'n entice

To our healing paradise

The polluting multitude:

But their rage would be subdued

By that clime divine and calm,

And the winds whose wings rain balm

On the uplifted soul, and leaves

Under which the bright sea heaves;

While each breathless interval

In their whisperings musical

The inspired soul supplies

With its own deep melodies;

And the Love which heals all strife

Circling, like the breath of life,

All things in that sweet abode

With its own mild brotherhood:--

They, not it, would change; and soon

Every sprite beneath the moon

Would repent its envy vain,

And the Earth grow young again.

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXXII

_ODE TO THE WEST WIND_

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, oh hear!

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height--

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear

And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than Thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seem'd a vision,--I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXXIII

_NATURE AND THE POET_

_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!

So like, so very like, was day to day!

Whene'er I look'd, thy image still was there;

It trembled, but it never pass'd away.

How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep,

No mood, which season takes away, or brings:

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,

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.

Thou shouldst have seem'd 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,

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;

And seen the soul of truth in every part,

A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.

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;

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.

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,

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,

--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,

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.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXIV

_THE POET'S DREAM_

On a Poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.

He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

Nor heed nor see what things they be--

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living Man,

Nurslings of Immortality!

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXXV

_GLEN-ALMAIN, THE NARROW GLEN_

In this still place, remote from men,

Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen;

In this still place, where murmurs on

But one meek streamlet, only one:

He sang of battles, and the breath

Of stormy war, and violent death;

And should, methinks, when all was past,

Have rightfully been laid at last

Where rocks were rudely heap'd, and rent

As by a spirit turbulent;

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,

And everything unreconciled;

In some complaining, dim retreat,

For fear and melancholy meet;

But this is calm; there cannot be

A more entire tranquillity.

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?

Or is it but a groundless creed?

What matters it?--I blame them not

Whose fancy in this lonely spot

Was moved; and in such way express'd

Their notion of its perfect rest.

A convent, even a hermit's cell,

Would break the silence of this Dell:

It is not quiet, is not ease;

But something deeper far than these;

The separation that is here

Is of the grave; and of austere

Yet happy feelings of the dead:

And, therefore, was it rightly said

That Ossian, last of all his race!

Lies buried in this lonely place.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXVI

The World is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours

And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXVII

_WITHIN KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE_

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,

With ill-match'd aims the Architect who plann'd

(Albeit labouring for a scanty band

Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense

And glorious work of fine intelligence!

--Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore

Of nicely-calculated less or more:--

So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof

Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die;

Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXVIII

_ODE ON A GRECIAN URN_

Thou still unravish'd 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

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempé or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

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!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unweariéd,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

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,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this 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.

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!

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.

_J. Keats_

CCCXXIX

_YOUTH AND AGE_

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee--

Both were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

When I was young?--Ah, woful when!

Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!

This breathing house not built with hands,

This body that does me grievous wrong,

O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands

How lightly then it flash'd along:

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather

When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,

Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!

O Youth! for years so many and sweet,

'Tis known that Thou and I were one,

I'll think it but a a fond conceit--

It cannot be, that Thou art gone!

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:--

And thou wert aye a masker bold!

What strange disguise hast now put on

To make believe that Thou art gone?

I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this alter'd size:

But Springtide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but Thought: so think I will

That Youth and I are house-mates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve!

Where no hope is, life's a warning

That only serves to make us grieve

When we are old:

--That only serves to make us grieve

With oft and tedious taking-leave,

Like some poor nigh-related guest

That may not rudely be dismist,

Yet hath out-stay'd his welcome while,

And tells the jest without the smile.

_S. T. Coleridge_

CCCXXX

_THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS_

We walked along, while bright and red

Uprose the morning sun;

And Matthew stopp'd, he look'd, and said

'The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering gray;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass

And by the steaming rills

We travell'd merrily, to pass

A day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun;

Then, from thy breast what thought,

Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop;

And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top,

To me he made reply:

'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this, which I have left

Full thirty years behind.

'And just above yon slope of corn

Such colours, and no other,

Were in the sky that April morn,

Of this the very brother.

'With rod and line I sued the sport

Which that sweet season gave,

And to the church-yard come, stopp'd short

Beside my daughter's grave.

'Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang,--she would have been

A very nightingale.

'Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more--

For so it seem'd,--than till that day

I e'er had loved before.

'And turning from her grave, I met,

Beside the churchyard yew,

A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet

With points of morning dew.

'A basket on her head she bare;

Her brow was smooth and white:

To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

'No fountain from its rocky cave

E'er tripp'd with foot so free;

She seem'd as happy as a wave

That dances on the sea.

'There came from me a sigh of pain

Which I could ill confine;

I look'd at her, and look'd again:

And did not wish her mine!'

--Matthew is in his grave, yet now

Methinks I see him stand

As at that moment, with a bough

Of wilding in his hand.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXXI

_THE FOUNTAIN_

_A Conversation_

We talk'd with open heart, and tongue

Affectionate and true,

A pair of friends, though I was young,

And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,

Beside a mossy seat;

And from the turf a fountain broke

And gurgled at our feet.

'Now, Matthew!' said I, 'let us match

This water's pleasant tune

With some old border-song, or catch

That suits a summer's noon;

'Or of the church-clock and the chimes

Sing here beneath the shade

That half-mad thing of witty rhymes

Which you last April made!'

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed

The spring beneath the tree;

And thus the dear old man replied,

The gray-hair'd man of glee:

'No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears,

How merrily it goes!

'Twill murmur on a thousand years

And flow as now it flows.

'And here, on this delightful day,

I cannot choose but think

How oft, a vigorous man, I lay

Beside this fountain's brink.

'My eyes are dim with childish tears,

My heart is idly stirr'd,

For the same sound is in my ears

Which in those days I heard.

'Thus fares it still in our decay:

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what Age takes away,

Than what it leaves behind.

'The blackbird amid leafy trees,

The lark above the hill,

Let loose their carols when they please,

Are quiet when they will.

'With Nature never do they wage

A foolish strife; they see

A happy youth, and their old age

Is beautiful and free:

'But we are press'd by heavy laws;

And often, glad no more,

We wear a face of joy, because

We have been glad of yore.

'If there be one who need bemoan

His kindred laid in earth,

The household hearts that were his own,--

It is the man of mirth.

'My days, my friend, are almost gone,

My life has been approved,

And many love me; but by none

Am I enough beloved.'

'Now both himself and me he wrongs,

The man who thus complains!

I live and sing my idle songs

Upon these happy plains:

'And Matthew, for thy children dead

I'll be a son to thee!'

At this he grasp'd my hand and said,

'Alas! that cannot be.'

--We rose up from the fountain-side;

And down the smooth descent

Of the green sheep-track did we glide;

And through the wood we went;

And ere we came to Leonard's rock

He sang those witty rhymes

About the crazy old church-clock,

And the bewilder'd chimes.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXXII

_THE RIVER OF LIFE_

The more we live, more brief appear

Our life's succeeding stages:

A day to childhood seems a year,

And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,

Ere passion yet disorders,

Steals lingering like a river smooth

Along its grassy borders.

But as the care-worn cheek grows wan,

And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,

Ye Stars, that measure life to man,

Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath

And life itself is vapid,

Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,

Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange--yet who would change

Time's course to slower speeding,

When one by one our friends have gone

And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength

Indemnifying fleetness;

And those of youth, a seeming length,

Proportion'd to their sweetness.

_T. Campbell_

CCCXXXIII

_THE HUMAN SEASONS_

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness--to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

_J. Keats_

CCCXXXIV

_A DIRGE_

Rough wind, that meanest loud

Grief too sad for song;

Wild wind, when sullen cloud

Knells all the night long;

Sad storm whose tears are vain,

Bare woods whose branches stain,

Deep caves and dreary main,--

Wail for the world's wrong!

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXXXV

_THRENOS_

O World! O Life! O Time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before;

When will return the glory of your prime?

No more--Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight:

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar

Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight

No more--Oh, never more!

_P. B. Shelley_

CCCXXXVI

_THE TROSACHS_

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass,

But were an apt confessional for One

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,

That Life is but a tale of morning grass

Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase

That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes

Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass

Untouch'd, unbreathed upon:--Thrice happy quest,

If from a golden perch of aspen spray

(October's workmanship to rival May),

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest!

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXXVII

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man:

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXXVIII

_ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY

CHILDHOOD_

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight

To me did seem

Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;--

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;--

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity.

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday;--

Thou child of joy

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!

Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.

Oh evil day! if I were sullen

While Earth herself is adorning

This sweet May-morning;

And the children are culling

On every side

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm

And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:--

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

--But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have look'd upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a mother's mind

And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' darling of a pigmy size:

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,

With light upon him from his father's eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learnéd art;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,--

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave:

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That Nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest,

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:

--Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts, before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprized:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor man nor boy

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence, in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither--

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We, in thought, will join your throng

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forbode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway:

I love the brooks which down their channels fret

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

_W. Wordsworth_

CCCXXXIX

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory--

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

_P. B. Shelley_

End of the Golden Treasury

NOTES

INDEX OF WRITERS

AND

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

NOTES

(1861--1891)

_Summary of Book First_

The Elizabethan Poetry, as it is rather vaguely termed, forms the

substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry

VIII to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I, and Drummond

who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here

a wide range of style;--from simplicity expressed in a language hardly

yet broken-in to verse,--through the pastoral fancies and Italian

conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time,--to the passionate reality

of Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers

can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the

single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:--nor less, the

limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then

characterized our lyrical poetry,--unless when, as in especial with

Shakespeare, the 'purple light of Love' is tempered by a spirit of

sterner reflection. For the didactic verse of the century, although

lyrical in form, yet very rarely rises to the pervading emotion, the

golden cadence, proper to the lyric.

It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in

the main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its

restriction to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical

Anthology has not been aimed at. Great excellence, in human art as in

human character, has from the beginning of things been even more

uniform than mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to

Nature:--and so far as the standard of Excellence kept in view has

been attained in this volume, a comparative absence of extreme or

temporary phases in style, a similarity of tone and manner, will be

found throughout:--something neither modern nor ancient, but true and

speaking to the heart of man alike throughout all ages.

PAGE NO.

2 3 _whist_: hushed, quieted.

-- 4 _Rouse Memnon's mother_: Awaken the Dawn from the dark Earth and

the clouds where she is resting. This is one of that limited class of

early mythes which may be reasonably interpreted as representations of

natural phenomena. Aurora in the old mythology is mother of Memnon

(the East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and Sky

during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in

renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst

Tithonus remains in perpetual old age and grayness.

3 -- l. 23 _by Peneus' stream_: Phoebus loved the Nymph Daphne whom he

met by the river Peneus in the vale of Tempe. L. 27 _Amphion's lyre_:

He was said to have built the walls of Thebes to the sound of his

music. L. 35 _Night like a drunkard reels_: Compare Romeo and Juliet,

Act II, Scene 3: 'The grey-eyed morn smiles,' &c.--It should be added

that three lines, which appeared hopelessly misprinted, have been

omitted in this Poem.

4 6 _Time's chest_: in which he is figuratively supposed to lay up

past treasures. So in Troilus, Act III, Scene 3, 'Time hath a wallet

at his back' &c. In the _Arcadia_, _chest_ is used to signify _tomb_.

5 7 A fine example of the high wrought and conventional Elizabethan

Pastoralism, which it would be unreasonable to criticize on the ground

of the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested.

Stanza 6 was perhaps inserted by Izaak Walton.

6 8 This beautiful lyric is one of several recovered from the very

rare Elizabethan Song-books, for the publication of which our thanks

are due to Mr. A. H. Bullen (1887, 1888).

8 12 One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with the

principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in a few

other poems. The more serious abbreviation by which it has been

attempted to bring Crashaw's 'Wishes' and Shelley's 'Euganean Hills,'

with one or two more, within the scheme of this selection, is

commended with much diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted

with the original pieces.

9 13 Sidney's poetry is singularly unequal; his short life, his

frequent absorption in public employment, hindered doubtless the

development of his genius. His great contemporary fame, second only,

it appears, to Spenser's, has been hence obscured. At times he is

heavy and even prosaic; his simplicity is rude and bare; his verse

unmelodious. These, however, are the 'defects of his merits.' In a

certain depth and chivalry of feeling,--in the rare and noble quality

of disinterestedness (to put it in one word),--he has no superior,

hardly perhaps an equal, amongst our Poets; and after or beside

Shakespeare's Sonnets, his _Astrophel and Stella_, in the Editor's

judgment, offers the most intense and powerful picture of the passion

of love in the whole range of our poetry.--_Hundreds of years_: 'The

very rapture of love,' says Mr. Ruskin; 'A lover like this does not

believe his mistress can grow old or die.'

12 19 Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one

picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in

its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to 'the

Islands of Terceras and the Canaries;' and he seems to have caught, in

those southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked

the almost contemporary Art of Venice,--the glory and the glow of

Veronese, Titian, or Tintoret.--From the same romance is No. 71: a

charming picture in the purest style of the later Italian Renaissance.

_The clear_ (l. 1) is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old

cosmography. _For a fair there's fairer none_: If you desire a Beauty,

there is none more beautiful than Rosaline.

14 22 Another gracious lyric from an Elizabethan Song-book, first

reprinted (it is believed) in Mr. W. J. Linton's 'Rare Poems,' in

1883.

15 23 _that fair thou owest_: that beauty thou ownest.

16 25 From one of the three Song-books of T. Campion, who appears to

have been author of the words which he set to music. His merit as a

lyrical poet (recognized in his own time, but since then forgotten)

has been again brought to light by Mr. Bullen's taste and

research:--_swerving_ (st. 2) is his conjecture for _changing_ in the

text of 1601.

20 31 _the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken_:

apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his

angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon

used by astrologers has been determined.

20 32 This lovely song appears, as here given, in Puttenham's 'Arte of

English Poesie,' 1589. A longer and inferior form was published in the

'Arcadia' of 1590: but Puttenham's prefatory words clearly assign his

version to Sidney's own authorship.

23 37 _keel_: keep cooler by stirring round.

24 39 _expense_: loss.

-- 40 _prease_: press.

25 41 _Nativity, once in the main of light_: when a star has risen and

entered on the full stream of light;--another of the astrological

phrases no longer familiar.

_Crooked_ eclipses: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.

Wordsworth, thinking probably of the 'Venus' and the 'Lucrece,' said

finely of Shakespeare: 'Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic;

he would have died of plethora of thought.' This prodigality of nature

is exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here

given (which from the wealth of the material, required greater

consideration than any other portion of the Editor's task),--contains

many that will not be fully felt and understood without some

earnestness of thought on the reader's part. But he is not likely to

regret the labour.

26 42 _upon misprision growing_: either, granted in error, or, on the

growth of contempt.

-- 43 With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's 'Give me that man

That is not passion's slave' &c. Shakespeare's writings show the

deepest sensitiveness to passion:--hence the attraction he felt in the

contrasting effects of apathy.

26 44 _grame_: sorrow. Renaissance influences long impeded the return

of English poets to the charming realism of this and a few other poems

by Wyat.

28 45 Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.

29 47 In the old legend it is now Philomela, now Procne (the swallow)

who suffers violence from Tereus. This song has a fascination in its

calm intensity of passion; that 'sad earnestness and vivid exactness'

which Cardinal Newman ascribes to the master-pieces of ancient poetry.

31 50 _proved_: approved.

-- 51 _censures_: judges.

-- 52 Exquisite in its equably-balanced metrical flow.

32 53 Judging by its style, this beautiful example of old simplicity

and feeling may, perhaps, be referred to the earlier years of

Elizabeth. _Late_ forgot: lately.

35 57 Printed in a little Anthology by Nicholas Breton, 1597. It is,

however, a stronger and finer piece of work than any known to be

his.--St. 1 _silly_: simple; _dole_: grief; _chief_: chiefly. St. 3

_If there be_ ...: obscure: Perhaps, if there be any who speak harshly

of thee, thy pain may plead for pity from Fate.

This poem, with 60 and 143, are each graceful variations of a long

popular theme.

36 58 _That busy archer:_ Cupid. _Descries_: used actively; _points

out_.--'The last line of this poem is a little obscured by

transposition. He means, _Do they call ungratefulness there a

virtue?_' (C. Lamb).

37 59 _White Iope_: suggested, Mr. Bullen notes, by a passage in

Propertius (iii, 20) describing Spirits in the lower world:

Vobiscum est Iope, vobiscum candida Tyro.

38 62 _cypres_ or cyprus,--used by the old writers for _crape_:

whether from the French _crespe_ or from the Island whence it was

imported. Its accidental similarity in spelling to _cypress_ has, here

and in Milton's Penseroso, probably confused readers.

39 63 _ramage_: confused noise.

41 66 'I never saw anything like this funeral dirge,' says Charles

Lamb, 'except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father

in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the

earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to

resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.'

43 70 Paraphrased from an Italian madrigal

... Non so conoscer poi

Se voi le rose, o sian le rose in voi.

44 72 _crystal_: fairness.

45 73 _stare_: starling.

-- 74 This 'Spousal Verse' was written in honour of the Ladies

Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. Nowhere has Spenser more

emphatically displayed himself as the very poet of Beauty: The

Renaissance impulse in England is here seen at its highest and purest.

The genius of Spenser, like Chaucer's, does itself justice only in

poems of some length. Hence it is impossible to represent it in this

volume by other pieces of equal merit, but of impracticable

dimensions. And the same applies to such poems as the _Lover's Lament_

or the _Ancient Mariner_.

46 -- _entrailed_: twisted. Feateously: elegantly.

48 -- _shend_: shame.

49 -- _a noble peer_: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the

height of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion

following to the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient

legend.

-- -- _Elisa_: Elizabeth.

50 -- _twins of Jove_: the stars Castor and Pollux: _baldric_, belt;

the zodiac.

52 79 This lyric may with very high probability be assigned to

Campion, in whose first Book of Airs it appeared (1601). The evidence

sometimes quoted ascribing it to Lord Bacon appears to be valueless.

_Summary of Book Second._

This division, embracing generally the latter eighty years of the

Seventeenth century, contains the close of our Early poetical style

and the commencement of the Modern. In Dryden we see the first master

of the new: in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in

the former book,--the crown and consummation of the early period.

Their splendid Odes are far in advance of any prior attempts,

Spenser's excepted: they exhibit that wider and grander range which

years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on

Poetry. Our Muses now give expression to political feeling, to

religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such

as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton: whilst in Marvell and Milton, again,

we find noble attempts, hitherto rare in our literature, at pure

description of nature, destined in our own age to be continued and

equalled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660

often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and

afterwards by levity and an artificial tone,--produced in Herrick and

Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan:

until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself,

and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of

Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.--That the change

from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of

nature and simplicity is undeniable; yet the bolder and wider scope

which Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts

then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results

have been no slight compensation.

PAGE NO.

58 85 l. 8 _whist_: hushed.

-- -- l. 32 _than_: obsolete for _then_: _Pan_: used here for the Lord

of all.

59 -- l. 38 _consort_: Milton's spelling of this word, here and

elsewhere, has been followed, as it is uncertain whether he used it in

the sense of _accompanying_, or simply for _concert_.

61 -- l. 21 _Lars and Lemures_: household gods and spirits of

relations dead. _Flamens_ (l. 24) Roman priests. _That twice-batter'd

god_ (l. 29) Dagon.

62 -- l. 6 _Osiris_, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by

confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and

embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This mythe, reproduced in Syria

and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, may

have originally signified the annual death of the Sun or the Year under

the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the

New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho. L. 8 _unshower'd_ grass: as watered

by the Nile only. L. 33 _youngest-teemed_: last-born. _Bright-harness'd_

(l. 37) armoured.

64 87 _The Late Massacre_: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655

by the Duke of Savoy. No more mighty Sonnet than this 'collect in

verse,' as it has been justly named, probably can be found in any

language. Readers should observe that it is constructed on the

original Italian or Provençal model. This form, in a language such as

ours, not affluent in rhyme, presents great difficulties; the rhymes

are apt to be forced, or the substance commonplace. But, when

successfully handled, it has a unity and a beauty of effect which

place the strict Sonnet above the less compact and less lyrical

systems adopted by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and other Elizabethan

poets.

65 88 Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650, and Marvell probably

wrote his lines soon after, whilst living at Nunappleton in the

Fairfax household. It is hence not surprising that (st. 21-24) he

should have been deceived by Cromwell's professed submissiveness to

the Parliament which, when it declined to register his decrees, he

expelled by armed violence:--one despotism, by natural law, replacing

another. The poet's insight has, however, truly prophesied that result

in his last two lines.

This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in

Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is

occasionally obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The

meaning of st. 5 is 'rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty

spirit, and limitation more hateful than opposition.' The allusion in

st. 11 is to the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a

vacuum and the impenetrability of matter:--in st. 17 to the omen

traditionally connected with the foundation of the Capitol at

Rome:--_forced_, fated. The ancient belief that certain years in life

complete natural periods and are hence peculiarly exposed to death, is

introduced in st. 26 by the word _climacteric_.

68 89 _Lycidas_: The person here lamented is Milton's college

contemporary, Edward King, drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from

Chester to Ireland.

Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian

Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited

more magnificently in _Lycidas_ than in any other pastoral, is

apparently of Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a

great artist, has here united ancient mythology, with what may be

called the modern mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,--to direct

Christian images. Yet the poem, if it gains in historical interest,

suffers in poetry by the harsh intrusion of the writer's narrow and

violent theological politics.--The metrical structure of this glorious

elegy is partly derived from Italian models.

69 -- l. 11 _Sisters of the sacred well_: the Muses, said to frequent

the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mount Olympus.

70 -- l. 10 _Mona_: Anglesea, called by the Welsh poets, the Dark

Island, from its dense forests. _Deva_ (l. 11) the Dee: a river which

may have derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was

long the boundary of Briton and English.--These places are introduced,

as being near the scene of the shipwreck. _Orpheus_ (l. 14) was torn

to pieces by Thracian women. _Amaryllis_ and _Neaera_ (l. 24, 25)

names used here for the love-idols of poets: as _Damoetas_ previously

for a shepherd. L. 31 _the blind Fury_: Atropos, fabled to cut the

thread of life.

71 89 _Arethuse_ (l. 1) and _Mincius_: Sicilian and Italian waters

here alluded to as representing the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and

Vergil. L. 4 _oat_: pipe, used here like Collins' _oaten stop_ l. 1,

No. 186, for _Song_. L. 12 _Hippotades_: Aeolus, god of the Winds.

_Panope_ (l. 15) a Nereid. Certain names of local deities in the

Hellenic mythology render some feature in the natural landscape, which

the Greeks studied and analysed with their usual unequalled insight

and feeling. _Panope_ seems to express the boundlessness of the

ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared with the limited

sky-line of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or Asia Minor.

_Camus_ (l. 19) the Cam: put for King's University. _The sanguine

flower_ (l. 22) the Hyacinth of the ancients: probably our Iris. _The

Pilot_ (l. 25) Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the

Church on earth, to foretell 'the ruin of our corrupted clergy,' as

Milton regarded them, 'then in their heighth' under Laud's primacy.

72 -- l. 1 _scrannel_: screeching; apparently Milton's coinage

(Masson). L. 5 _the wolf_: the Puritans of the time were excited to

alarm and persecution by a few conversions to Roman Catholicism which

had recently occurred. _Alpheus_ (l. 9) a stream in Southern Greece,

supposed to flow underseas to join the Arethuse. _Swart star_ (l. 15)

the Dog-star, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in ancient

times occurred soon after midsummer: l. 19 _rathe_: early. L. 36

_moist vows_: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea.

_Bellerus_ (l. 37) a giant, apparently created here by Milton to

personify Belerium, the ancient title of the Land's End. _The great

Vision_:--the story was that the Archangel Michael had appeared on the

rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name. Milton calls on

him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to pity Lycidas, if

his body has drifted into the troubled waters off the Land's End.

Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places in that

district (then through our trade with Corunna probably less unfamiliar

to English ears), are named,--_Namancos_ now Mujio in Galicia,

_Bayona_ north of the Minho, or perhaps a fortified rock (one of the

_Cies_ Islands) not unlike Saint Michael's Mount, at the entrance of

Vigo Bay.

73 89 l. 6 _ore_: rays of golden light. _Doric_ lay (l. 25) Sicilian,

pastoral.

75 93 _The assault_ was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the

troops of Charles I reached Brentford. 'Written on his door' was in

the original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in

Aldersgate Street.

_The Emathian Conqueror_: When Thebes was destroyed (B.C. 335) and the

citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar

to be spared.

7 -- l. 2, _the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet_: Plutarch has a

tale that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a

proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on

the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the _Electra_ of

Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity

between the lines quoted (167, 168 Ed. Dindorf) and the result

ascribed to them.

-- 95 A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;--that written by

thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Jeremy Taylor,

Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar

specimens.

78 98 These beautiful verses should be compared with Wordsworth's

great Ode on _Immortality_: and a copy of Vaughan's very rare little

volume appears in the list of Wordsworth's library.--In imaginative

intensity, Vaughan stands beside his contemporary Marvell.

79 99 _Favonius_: the spring wind.

80 100 _Themis_: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his

mother to Sir E. Coke:--hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley,

Milton's allusion to the _bench_. L. 8: Sweden was then at war with

Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.

82 103 l. 28 _Sidneian showers_: either in allusion to the

conversations in the 'Arcadia,' or to Sidney himself as a model of

'gentleness' in spirit and demeanour.

85 105 Delicate humour, delightfully united to thought, at once simple

and subtle. It is full of conceit and paradox, but these are

imaginative, not as with most of our Seventeenth Century poets,

intellectual only.

88 110 _Elizabeth of Bohemia_: Daughter to James I, and ancestor of

Sophia of Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and

courtly compliment.

89 111 Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of

Marlborough, who died March, 1629, coincidently with the dissolution

of the third Parliament of Charles' reign. Hence Milton poetically

compares his death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after

Philip's victory in 328 B.C.

93 118 A masterpiece of humour, grace, and gentle feeling, all, with

Herrick's unfailing art, kept precisely within the peculiar key which

he chose,--or Nature for him,--in his Pastorals. L. 2 _the god

unshorn_: Imberbis Apollo. St. 2 _beads_: prayers.

96 123 With better taste, and less diffuseness, Quarles might (one

would think) have retained more of that high place which he held in

popular estimate among his contemporaries.

99 127 _From Prison_: to which his active support of Charles I twice

brought the high-spirited writer. L. 7 _Gods_: thus in the original;

Lovelace, in his fanciful way, making here a mythological allusion.

_Birds_, commonly substituted, is without authority. St. 3, l. 1

_committed_: to prison.

100 128 St. 2 l. 4 _blue-god_: Neptune.

104 133 _Waly waly_: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the

pronunciation of which are preserved in the word _caterwaul_. _Brae_,

hillside: _burn_, brook: _busk_, adorn. _Saint Anton's Well_: below

Arthur's Seat by Edinburgh. _Cramasie_, crimson.

105 134 This beautiful example of early simplicity is found in a

Song-book of 1620.

106 135 _burd_, maiden.

107 136 _corbies_, crows: _fail_, turf: _hause_, neck: _theek_,

thatch.--If not in their origin, in their present form this, with the

preceding poem and 133, appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and

have therefore been placed in Book II.

108 137 The poetical and the prosaic, after Cowley's fashion, blend

curiously in this deeply-felt elegy.

112 141 Perhaps no poem in this collection is more delicately fancied,

more exquisitely finished. By placing his description of the Fawn in a

young girl's mouth, Marvell has, as it were, legitimated that

abundance of 'imaginative hyperbole' to which he is always partial: he

makes us feel it natural that a maiden's favourite should be whiter

than milk, sweeter than sugar--'lilies without, roses within,' The

poet's imagination is justified in its seeming extravagance by the

intensity and unity with which it invests his picture.

113 142 The remark quoted in the note to No. 65 applies equally to

these truly wonderful verses. Marvell here throws himself into the

very soul of the _Garden_ with the imaginative intensity of Shelley in

his _West Wind_.--This poem appears also as a translation in Marvell's

works. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is

rare, answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:--

Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis,

Simplicitas! vos ergo diu per templa, per urbes

Quaesivi, regum perque alta palatia, frustra:

Sed vos hortorum per opaca silentia, longe

Celarunt plantae virides, et concolor umbra.

115 143 St. 3 _tutties_: nosegays. St. 4 _silly_: simple.

_L'Allégro_ and _Il Penseroso_. It is a striking proof of Milton's

astonishing power, that these, the earliest great Lyrics of the

Landscape in our language, should still remain supreme in their style

for range, variety, and melodious beauty. The Bright and the

Thoughtful aspects of Nature and of Life are their subjects: but each

is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and

Italian manner.--With that of _L'Allégro_ may be compared a similar

mythe in the first Section of the first Book of S. Marmion's graceful

_Cupid and Psyche_, 1637.

116 144 _The mountain-nymph_; compare Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. 254. L.

38 is in _apposition_ to the preceding, by a syntactical license not

uncommon with Milton.

118 -- l. 14 _Cynosure_; the Pole Star. _Corydon_, _Thyrsis_, &c.:

Shepherd names from the old Idylls. _Rebeck_ (l. 28) an elementary

form of violin.

119 -- l. 24 _Jonson's learned sock_: His comedies are deeply coloured

by classical study. L. 28 _Lydian airs_: used here to express a light

and festive style of ancient music. The 'Lydian Mode,' one of the

seven original Greek Scales, is nearly identical with our 'Major.'

120 145 l. 3 _bestead_: avail. L. 10 _starr'd Ethiop queen_:

Cassiopeia, the legendary Queen of Ethiopia, and thence translated

amongst the constellations.

121 -- _Cynthia_: the Moon: Milton seems here to have transferred to

her chariot the dragons anciently assigned to Demeter and to Medea.

122 -- _Hermes_, called Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the

Neo-Platonist school. L. 27 _Thebes_, &c.: subjects of Athenian

Tragedy. _Buskin'd_ (l. 30) tragic, in opposition to sock above. L. 32

_Musaeus_: a poet in Mythology. L. 37 _him that left half-told_:

Chaucer in his incomplete 'Squire's Tale.'

123 -- _great bards_: Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, are here presumably

intended. L. 9 _frounced_: curled. _The Attic Boy_ (l. 10) Cephalus.

124 146 Emigrants supposed to be driven towards America by the

government of Charles I.

125 -- l. 9, 10. _But apples_, &c. A fine example of Marvell's

imaginative hyperbole.

-- 147 l. 6 _concent_: harmony.

128 149 A lyric of a strange, fanciful, yet solemn beauty:--Cowley's

style intensified by the mysticism of Henry More.--St. 2 _monument_:

the World.

129 151 Entitled 'A Song in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day: 1697.'

_Summary of Book Third_

It is more difficult to characterize the English Poetry of the

Eighteenth century than that of any other. For it was an age not only

of spontaneous transition, but of bold experiment: it includes not

only such absolute contrasts as distinguish the 'Rape of the Lock'

from the 'Parish Register,' but such vast contemporaneous differences

as lie between Pope and Collins, Burns and Cowper. Yet we may clearly

trace three leading moods or tendencies:--the aspects of courtly or

educated life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his

followers; the poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a

cultivated, and at the same time an impassioned frame of mind by

Collins and Gray:--lastly, the study of vivid and simple narrative,

including natural description, begun by Gay and Thomson, pursued by

Burns and others in the north, and established in England by

Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper. Great varieties in style

accompanied these diversities in aim: poets could not always

distinguish the manner suitable for subjects so far apart: and the

union of conventional and of common language, exhibited most

conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century

which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than

by naming it artificial. There is, again, a nobleness of thought, a

courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in

many of the writers:--nor can that period be justly termed tame and

wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires,

Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carey, the songs of

Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this, as at all times, was a more

or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age: and the many

complex causes which made the Eighteenth century the turning-time in

modern European civilization are also more or less reflected in its

verse. An intelligent reader will find the influence of Newton as

markedly in the poems of Pope, as of Elizabeth in the plays of

Shakespeare. On this great subject, however, these indications must

here be sufficient.

PAGE NO.

134 153 We have no poet more marked by rapture, by the ecstasy which

Plato held the note of genuine inspiration, than Collins. Yet but

twice or thrice do his lyrics reach that simplicity, that _sinceram

sermonis Attici gratiam_ to which this ode testifies his enthusiastic

devotion. His style, as his friend Dr. Johnson truly remarks, was

obscure; his diction often harsh and unskilfully laboured; he

struggles nobly against the narrow, artificial manner of his age, but

his too scanty years did not allow him to reach perfect mastery. St.

3 _Hybla_: near Syracuse. _Her whose ... woe_: the nightingale, 'for

which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness';

Collins here refers to the famous chorus in the _Oedipus at Colonus_.

St. 4 _Cephisus_: the stream encircling Athens on the north and west,

passing Colonus. St. 6 _stay'd to sing_: stayed her song when Imperial

tyranny was established at Rome. St. 7 refers to the Italian amourist

poetry of the Renaissance: In Collins' day, Dante was almost unknown

in England. St. 8 _meeting soul_: which moves sympathetically towards

Simplicity as she comes to inspire the poet. St. 9 _Of these_: Taste

and Genius.

_The Bard._ In 1757, when this splendid ode was completed, so very

little had been printed, whether in Wales or in England, in regard to

Welsh poetry, that it is hard to discover whence Gray drew his Cymric

allusions. The fabled massacre of the Bards (shown to be wholly

groundless in Stephens' _Literature of the Kymry_) appears first in

the family history of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir (cir. 1600), not

published till 1773; but the story seems to have passed in MS. to

Carte's History, whence it may have been taken by Gray. The references

to _high-born Hoel_ and _soft Llewellyn_; to _Cadwallo_ and _Urien_;

may, similarly, have been derived from the 'Specimens' of early Welsh

poetry, by the Rev. E. Evans:--as, although not published till 1764,

the MS., we learn from a letter to Dr. Wharton, was in Gray's hands by

July 1760, and may have reached him by 1757. It is, however, doubtful

whether Gray (of whose acquaintance with Welsh we have no evidence)

must not have been also aided by some Welsh scholar. He is one of the

poets least likely to scatter epithets at random: 'soft' or gentle is

the epithet emphatically and specially given to Llewelyn in

contemporary Welsh poetry, and is hence here used with particular

propriety. Yet, without such assistance as we have suggested, Gray

could hardly have selected the epithet, although applied to the King

(p. 141-3) among a crowd of others, in Llygad Gwr's Ode, printed by

Evans.--After lamenting his comrades (st. 2, 3) the Bard prophesies

the fate of Edward II, and the conquests of Edward III (4): his death

and that of the Black Prince (5): of Richard II, with the wars of York

and Lancaster, the murder of Henry VI (_the meek usurper_), and of

Edward V and his brother (6). He turns to the glory and prosperity

following the accession of the Tudors (7), through Elizabeth's reign

(8): and concludes with a vision of the poetry of Shakespeare and

Milton.

140 159 l. 13 _Glo'ster_: Gilbert de Clare, son-in-law to Edward.

_Mortimer_, one of the Lords Marchers of Wales.

141 159 _High-born Hoel, soft Llewellyn_ (l. 15); the _Dissertatio de

Bardis_ of Evans names the first as son to the King Owain Gwynedd:

Llewelyn, last King of North Wales, was murdered 1282. L. 16

_Cadwallo_: Cadwallon (died 631) and Urien Rheged (early kings of

Gwynedd and Cumbria respectively) are mentioned by Evans (p. 78) as

bards none of whose poetry is extant. L. 20 _Modred_: Evans supplies

no _data_ for this name, which Gray (it has been supposed) uses for

Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt), held prophet as well as poet.--The Italicized

lines mark where the Bard's song is joined by that of his predecessors

departed. L. 22 _Arvon_: the shores of Carnarvonshire opposite

Anglesey. Whether intentionally or through ignorance of the real

dates, Gray here seems to represent the _Bard_ as speaking of these

poets, all of earlier days, Llewelyn excepted, as his own

contemporaries at the close of the thirteenth century.

Gray, whose penetrating and powerful genius rendered him in many ways

an initiator in advance of his age, is probably the first of our poets

who made some acquaintance with the rich and admirable poetry in which

Wales from the Sixth Century has been fertile,--before and since his

time so barbarously neglected, not in England only. Hence it has been

thought worth while here to enter into a little detail upon his Cymric

allusions.

142 -- l. 5 _She-wolf_: Isabel of France, adulterous Queen of Edward

II.--L. 35 _Towers of Julius_: the Tower of London, built in part,

according to tradition, by Julius Caesar.

143 -- l. 2 _bristled boar_: the badge of Richard III. L. 7 _Half of

thy heart_: Queen Eleanor died soon after the conquest of Wales. L. 18

_Arthur_: Henry VII named his eldest son thus, in deference to native

feeling and story.

144 161 The Highlanders called the battle of Culloden, Drumossie.

145 162 _lilting_, singing blithely: _loaning_, broad lane: _bughts_,

pens: _scorning_, rallying: _dowie_, dreary: _daffin'_ and _gabbin'_,

joking and chatting: _leglin_, milkpail: _shearing_, reaping:

_bandsters_, sheaf-binders: _lyart_, grizzled: _runkled_, wrinkled:

_fleeching_, coaxing: _gloaming_, twilight: _bogle_, ghost: _dool_,

sorrow.

147 164 The Editor has found no authoritative text of this poem, to

his mind superior to any other of its class in melody and pathos. Part

is probably not later than the seventeenth century: in other stanzas a

more modern hand, much resembling Scott's, is traceable. Logan's poem

(163) exhibits a knowledge rather of the old legend than of the old

verses,--_Hecht_, promised; the obsolete _hight_: _mavis_, thrush:

_ilka_, every: _lav'rock_, lark: _haughs_, valley-meadows: _twined_,

parted from: _marrow_, mate: _syne_, then.

148 165 The Royal George, of 108 guns, whilst undergoing a partial

careening at Spithead, was overset about 10 A.M. Aug. 29, 1782. The

total loss was believed to be nearly 1000 souls.--This little poem

might be called one of our trial-pieces, in regard to taste. The

reader who feels the vigour of description and the force of pathos

underlying Cowper's bare and truly Greek simplicity of phrase, may

assure himself _se valde profecisse_ in poetry.

151 167 A little masterpiece in a very difficult style: Catullus

himself could hardly have bettered it. In grace, tenderness,

simplicity, and humour, it is worthy of the Ancients: and even more

so, from the completeness and unity of the picture presented.

155 172 Perhaps no writer who has given such strong proofs of the

poetic nature has left less satisfactory poetry than Thomson. Yet this

song, with 'Rule Britannia' and a few others, must make us regret that

he did not more seriously apply himself to lyrical writing.

156 174 With what insight and tenderness, yet in how few words, has

this painter-poet here himself told _Love's Secret!_

157 177 l. 1 _Aeolian lyre_: the Greeks ascribed the origin of their

Lyrical Poetry to the Colonies of Aeolis in Asia Minor.

158 -- _Thracia's hills_ (l. 9) supposed a favourite resort of Mars.

_Feather'd king_ (l. 13) the Eagle of Jupiter, admirably described by

Pindar in a passage here imitated by Gray. _Idalia_ (l. 19) in Cyprus,

where _Cytherea_ (Venus) was especially worshipped.

159 -- l. 6 _Hyperion_: the Sun. St. 6-8 allude to the Poets of the

Islands and Mainland of Greece, to those of Rome and of England.

160 -- l. 27 _Theban Eagle_: Pindar.

163 178 l. 5 _chaste-eyed Queen_: Diana.

164 179 From that wild rhapsody of mingled grandeur, tenderness, and

obscurity, that 'medley between inspiration and possession,' which

poor Smart is believed to have written whilst in confinement for

madness.

165 181 _the dreadful light_: of life and experience.

166 182 _Attic warbler_: the nightingale.

168 184 _sleekit_, sleek: _bickering brattle_, flittering flight: _laith_,

loth: _pattle_, ploughstaff: _whyles_, at times: _a daimenicker_, a

corn-ear now and then: _thrave_, shock: _lave_, rest: _foggage_,

after-grass: _snell_, biting: _but hald_, without dwelling-place: _thole_,

bear: _cranreuch_, hoar-frost: _thy lane_, alone: _a-gley_, off the right

line, awry.

175 188 _stoure_, dust-storm; _braw_, smart.

176 189 _scaith_, hurt: _tent_, guard: _steer_, molest.

177 191 _drumlie_, muddy: _birk_, birch.

178 192 _greet_, cry: _daurna_, dare not.--There can hardly exist a

poem more truly tragic in the highest sense than this: nor, perhaps,

Sappho excepted, has any Poetess equalled it.

180 193 _fou_, merry with drink: _coost_, carried: _unco skeigh_, very

proud: _gart_, forced: _abeigh_, aside: _Ailsa craig_, a rock in the Firth

of Clyde: _grat his een bleert_, cried till his eyes were bleared:

_lowpin_, leaping: _linn_, waterfall: _sair_, sore: _smoor'd_, smothered:

_crouse_ and _canty_, blithe and gay.

181 194 Burns justly named this 'one of the most beautiful songs in

the Scots or any other language.' One stanza, interpolated by Beattie,

is here omitted:--it contains two good lines, but is out of harmony

with the original poem. _Bigonet_, little cap: probably altered from

_béguinette_: _thraw_, twist: _caller_, fresh.

182 195 Burns himself, despite two attempts, failed to improve this

little absolute masterpiece of music, tenderness, and simplicity: this

'Romance of a life' in eight lines.--_Eerie_: strictly, scared:

uneasy.

183 196 _airts_, quarters: _row_, roll: _shaw_, small wood in a

hollow, spinney: _knowes_, knolls. The last two stanzas are not by

Burns.

184 197 _jo_, sweetheart: _brent_, smooth: _pow_, head.

-- 198 _leal_, faithful. St. 3 _fain_, happy.

185 199 Henry VI founded Eton.

188 200 Written in 1773, towards the beginning of Cowper's second

attack of melancholy madness--a time when he altogether gave up

prayer, saying, 'For him to implore mercy would only anger God the

more.' Yet had he given it up when sane, it would have been 'maior

insania.'

191 203 The Editor would venture to class in the very first rank this

Sonnet, which, with 204, records Cowper's gratitude to the Lady whose

affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness he could enjoy to

a life radically wretched. Petrarch's sonnets have a more ethereal

grace and a more perfect finish; Shakespeare's more passion; Milton's

stand supreme in stateliness; Wordsworth's in depth and delicacy. But

Cowper's unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the

ancients would have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness

peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature.--There is much mannerism,

much that is unimportant or of now exhausted interest in his poems:

but where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which

rests on the most universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest

master in simple pathos.

193 205 Cowper's last original poem, founded upon a story told in

Anson's 'Voyages.' It was written March 1799; he died in next year's

April.

195 206 Very little except his name appears recoverable with regard

to the author of this truly noble poem, which appeared in the

'Scripscrapologia, or Collins' Doggerel Dish of All Sorts,' with three

or four other pieces of merit, Birmingham, 1804.--_Everlasting_; used

with side-allusion to a cloth so named, at the time when Collins

wrote.

_Summary of Book Fourth_

It proves sufficiently the lavish wealth of our own age in Poetry,

that the pieces which, without conscious departure from the standard

of Excellence, render this Book by far the longest, were with very few

exceptions composed during the first thirty years of the Nineteenth

century. Exhaustive reasons can hardly be given for the strangely

sudden appearance of individual genius: that, however, which assigns

the splendid national achievements of our recent poetry to an impulse

from the France of the first Republic and Empire is inadequate. The

first French Revolution was rather one result,--the most conspicuous,

indeed, yet itself in great measure essentially retrogressive,--of

that wider and more potent spirit which through enquiry and attempt,

through strength and weakness, sweeps mankind round the circles (not,

as some too confidently argue, of Advance, but) of gradual

Transformation: and it is to this that we must trace the literature of

Modern Europe. But, without attempting discussion on the motive causes

of Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, we may observe that these

Poets carried to further perfection the later tendencies of the

Century preceding, in simplicity of narrative, reverence for human

Passion and Character in every sphere, and love of Nature for

herself:--that, whilst maintaining on the whole the advances in art

made since the Restoration, they renewed the half-forgotten melody and

depth of tone which marked the best Elizabethan writers:--that,

lastly, to what was thus inherited they added a richness in language

and a variety in metre, a force and fire in narrative, a tenderness

and bloom in feeling, an insight into the finer passages of the Soul

and the inner meanings of the landscape, a larger sense of

Humanity,--hitherto scarcely attained, and perhaps unattainable even

by predecessors of not inferior individual genius. In a word, the

Nation which, after the Greeks in their glory, may fairly claim that

during six centuries it has proved itself the most richly gifted of

all nations for Poetry, expressed in these men the highest strength

and prodigality of its nature. They interpreted the age to

itself--hence the many phases of thought and style they present:--to

sympathize with each, fervently and impartially, without fear and

without fancifulness, is no doubtful step in the higher education of

the soul. For purity in taste is absolutely proportionate to

strength--and when once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to

delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most

wisely.

But the gallery which this Book offers to the reader will aid him more

than any preface. It is a royal Palace of Poetry which he is invited

to enter:

Adparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt--

though it is, indeed, to the sympathetic eye only that its treasures

will be visible.

PAGE NO.

197 208 This beautiful lyric, printed in 1783, seems to anticipate in

its imaginative music that return to our great early age of song,

which in Blake's own lifetime was to prove,--how gloriously! that the

English Muses had resumed their 'ancient melody':--Keats, Shelley,

Byron,--he overlived them all.

199 210 _stout Cortez_: History would here suggest _Balbóa_: (A.T.) It

may be noticed, that to find in Chapman's Homer the 'pure serene' of

the original, the reader must bring with him the imagination of the

youthful poet;--he must be 'a Greek himself,' as Shelley finely said

of Keats.

202 212 The most tender and true of Byron's smaller poems.

203 213 This poem exemplifies the peculiar skill with which Scott

employs proper names:--a rarely misleading sign of true poetical

genius.

213 226 Simple as _Lucy Gray_ seems, a mere narrative of what 'has

been, and may be again,' yet every touch in the child's picture is

marked by the deepest and purest ideal character. Hence, pathetic as

the situation is, this is not strictly a pathetic poem, such as

Wordsworth gives us in 221, Lamb in 264, and Scott in his _Maid of

Neidpath_,--'almost more pathetic,' as Tennyson once remarked, 'than a

man has the right to be.' And Lyte's lovely stanzas (224) suggest,

perhaps, the same remark.

222 235 In this and in other instances the addition (or the change) of

a Title has been risked, in hope that the aim of the piece following

may be grasped more clearly and immediately.

228 242 This beautiful Sonnet was the last word of a youth, in whom,

if the fulfilment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise,

England lost one of the most rarely gifted in the long roll of her

poets. Shakespeare and Milton, had their lives been closed at

twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less

excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the

London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of 'high

collateral glory.'

230 245 It is impossible not to regret that Moore has written so

little in this sweet and genuinely national style.

231 246 A masterly example of Byron's command of strong thought and

close reasoning in verse:--as the next is equally characteristic of

Shelley's wayward intensity.

240 253 Bonnivard, a Genevese, was imprisoned by the Duke of Savoy in

Chillon on the lake of Geneva for his courageous defence of his

country against the tyranny with which Piedmont threatened it during

the first half of the Seventeenth century.--This noble Sonnet is

worthy to stand near Milton's on the Vaudois massacre.

241 254 Switzerland was usurped by the French under Napoleon in 1800:

Venice in 1797 (255).

243 259 This battle was fought Dec. 2, 1800, between the Austrians

under Archduke John and the French under Moreau, in a forest near

Munich. _Hohen Linden_ means _High Limetrees_.

247 262 After the capture of Madrid by Napoleon, Sir J. Moore

retreated before Soult and Ney to Corunna, and was killed whilst

covering the embarkation of his troops.

257 272 The Mermaid was the club-house of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and

other choice spirits of that age.

258 273 _Maisie_: Mary.--Scott has given us nothing more complete and

lovely than this little song, which unites simplicity and dramatic

power to a wild-wood music of the rarest quality. No moral is drawn,

far less any conscious analysis of feeling attempted:--the pathetic

meaning is left to be suggested by the mere presentment of the

situation. A narrow criticism has often named this, which maybe called

the Homeric manner, superficial, from its apparent simple facility;

but first-rate excellence in it is in truth one of the least common

triumphs of Poetry.--This style should be compared with what is not

less perfect in its way, the searching out of inner feeling, the

expression of hidden meanings, the revelation of the heart of Nature

and of the Soul within the Soul,--the analytical method, in

short,--most completely represented by Wordsworth and by Shelley.

263 277 Wolfe resembled Keats, not only in his early death by

consumption and the fluent freshness of his poetical style, but in

beauty of character:--brave, tender, energetic, unselfish, modest. Is

it fanciful to find some reflex of these qualities in the _Burial_ and

_Mary_? Out of the abundance of the _heart_ ...

264 278 _correi_: covert on a hillside. _Cumber_: trouble.

265 250 This book has not a few poems of greater power and more

perfect execution than _Agnes_ and the extract which we have ventured

to make from the deep-hearted author's _Sad Thoughts_ (No. 224). But

none are more emphatically marked by the note of exquisiteness.

266 281 st. 3 _inch_: island.

270 283 From _Poetry for Children_ (1809), by Charles and

Mary Lamb. This tender and original little piece seems clearly to

reveal the work of that noble-minded and afflicted sister, who was at

once the happiness, the misery, and the life-long blessing of her

equally noble-minded brother.

278 289 This poem has an exaltation and a glory, joined with an

exquisiteness of expression, which place it in the highest rank among

the many masterpieces of its illustrious Author.

289 300 _interlunar swoon_: interval of the moon's invisibility.

294 304 _Calpe_: Gibraltar. _Lofoden_: the Maelstrom whirlpool off the

N.W. coast of Norway.

295 305 This lovely poem refers here and there to a ballad by Hamilton

on the subject better treated in 163 and 164.

307 315 _Arcturi_: seemingly used for _northern stars_. _And wild

roses, &c._ Our language has perhaps no line modulated with more

subtle sweetness.

308 316 Coleridge describes this poem as the fragment of a

dream-vision,--perhaps, an opium-dream?--which composed itself in his

mind when fallen asleep after reading a few lines about 'the Khan

Kubla' in Purchas' _Pilgrimage_.

312 318 _Ceres' daughter_: Proserpine. _God of Torment_: Pluto.

320 321 The leading idea of this beautiful description of a day's

landscape in Italy appears to be--On the voyage of life are many

moments of pleasure, given by the sight of Nature, who has power to

heal even the worldliness and the uncharity of man.

321 -- l. 23 Amphitrite was daughter to Ocean.

325 322 l. 21 _Maenad_: a frenzied Nymph, attendant on Dionysos in the

Greek mythology. May we not call this the most vivid, sustained, and

impassioned amongst all Shelley's magical personifications of Nature?

326 -- l. 5 Plants under water sympathize with the seasons of the

land, and hence with the winds which affect them.

327 323 Written soon after the death, by shipwreck, of Wordsworth's

brother John. This poem may be profitably compared with Shelley's

following it. Each is the most complete expression of the innermost

spirit of his art given by these great Poets:--of that Idea which, as

in the case of the true Painter, (to quote the words of Reynolds,)

'subsists only in the mind: The sight never beheld it, nor has the

hand expressed it: it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist,

which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last

without imparting.'

328 -- _the Kind_: the human race.

331 327 _the Royal Saint_: Henry VI.

331 328 st. 4 _this_ folk: _its_ has been here plausibly but, perhaps,

unnecessarily, conjectured.--Every one knows the general story of the

Italian Renaissance, of the Revival of Letters.--From Petrarch's day

to our own, that ancient world has renewed its youth: Poets and

artists, students and thinkers, have yielded themselves wholly to its

fascination, and deeply penetrated its spirit. Yet perhaps no one more

truly has vivified, whilst idealizing, the picture of Greek country

life in the fancied Golden Age, than Keats in these lovely (if

somewhat unequally executed) stanzas:--his quick imagination, by a

kind of 'natural magic,' more than supplying the scholarship which his

youth had no opportunity of gaining.

105 134 These stanzas are by Richard Verstegan (--c. 1635), a poet and

antiquarian, published in his rare Odes (1601), under the title _Our

Blessed Ladies Lullaby_, and reprinted by Mr. Orby Shipley in his

beautiful _Carmina Mariana_ (1893). The four stanzas here given form

the opening of a hymn of twenty-four.

INDEX OF WRITERS

WITH DATES OF BIRTH AND DEATH

ALEXANDER, William (1580-1640) 29

BARBAULD, Anna Laetitia (1743-1825) 207

BARNEFIELD, Richard (16th Century) 45

BEAUMONT, Francis (1586-1616) 90

BLAKE, William (1757-1827) 174, 180, 181, 208

BURNS, Robert (1759-1796) 161, 168, 176, 184, 188, 189, 190,

191, 193, 196, 197

BYRON, George Gordon Noel (1788-1824) 212, 214, 216, 234, 246,

253, 266, 275

CAMPBELL, Thomas (1777-1844) 225, 231, 241, 250, 251, 259, 295,

304, 310, 314, 332

CAMPION, Thomas (c. 1567-1620) 25, 26, 50, 52, 55, 59, 76, 79,

101, 143

CAREW, Thomas (1589-1639) 112

CAREY, Henry (---- -1743) 167

CIBBER, Colley (1671-1757) 155

COLERIDGE, Hartley (1796-1849) 218

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) 211, 316, 329

COLLINS, John (18th Century) 206

COLLINS, William (1720-1756) 153, 160, 178, 186

COWLEY, Abraham (1618-1667) 130, 137

COWPER, William (1731-1800) 165, 170, 183, 200, 202, 203, 204,

205

CRASHAW, Richard (1615?-1652) 103

CUNNINGHAM, Allan (1784-1842) 249

DANIEL, Samuel (1562-1619) 46

DEKKER, Thomas (---- -1638?) 75

DEVEREUX, Robert (1567-1601) 83

DONNE, John (1573-1631) 12

DRAYTON, Michael (1563-1631) 49

DRUMMOND, William (1585-1649) 4, 61, 63, 77, 80, 81, 84

DRYDEN, John (1631-1700) 86, 151

ELLIOTT, Jane (18th Century) 162

FLETCHER, John (1576-1625) 132

GAY, John (1685-1732) 166

GOLDSMITH, Oliver (1728-1774) 175

GRAHAM, Robert (1735-1797) 169

GRAY, Thomas (1716-1771) 152, 156, 159, 177, 182, 187, 199,

201

GREENE, Robert (1561?-1592) 60

HABINGTON, William (1605-1645) 148

HERBERT, George (1593-1632) 97

HERRICK, Robert (1591-1674?) 108, 113, 118, 119, 120, 124, 139,

140

HEYWOOD, Thomas (---- -1649?) 73

HOOD, Thomas (1798-1845) 268, 274, 279

JONSON, Ben (1574-1637) 96, 102, 116

KEATS, John (1795-1821) 209, 210, 235, 237, 242, 243,

272, 290, 292, 303, 318, 328, 333

LAMB, Charles (1775-1835) 264, 276, 282

LAMB, Mary (1764-1847) 283

LINDSAY, Anne (1750-1825) 192

LODGE, Thomas (1556-1625) 19, 71

LOGAN, John (1748-1788) 163

LOVELACE, Richard (1618-1658) 109, 127, 128

LYLYE, John (1554-1600) 72

LYTE, Henry Francis (1793-1847) 224, 280

MARLOWE, Christopher (1562-1593) 7

MARVELL, Andrew (1620-1678) 88, 105, 141, 142, 146

MICKLE, William Julius (1734-1788) 194

MILTON, John (1608-1674) 85, 87, 89, 93, 94, 99, 100, 111,

144, 145, 147

MOORE, Thomas (1780-1852) 229, 245, 261, 265, 269

NAIRN, Carolina (1766-1845) 198

NASH, Thomas (1567-1601?) 1

NORRIS, John (1657-1711) 149

PHILIPS, Ambrose (1671-1749) 157

POPE, Alexander (1688-1744) 154

PRIOR, Matthew (1662-1721) 173

QUARLES, Francis (1592-1644) 123

ROGERS, Samuel (1762-1855) 171, 185

SCOTT, Walter (1771-1832) 213, 227, 230, 236, 238, 240, 248,

273, 278, 281, 285, 311

SEDLEY, Charles (1639-1701) 106, 126

SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616) 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15,

16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 27, 31, 35,

37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 48, 51,

56, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 78, 82

SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) 215, 219, 228, 232, 239, 247, 270,

287, 293, 300, 307, 308, 312, 315,

321, 322, 324, 334, 335, 339

SHIRLEY, James (1596-1666) 91, 92

SIDNEY, Philip (1554-1586) 13, 32, 40, 47, 58

SMART, Christopher (1722-1770) 179

SOUTHEY, Robert (1774-1843) 260, 271

SPENSER, Edmund (1553-1598-9) 74

SUCKLING, John (1608-9-1641) 129

SYLVESTER, Joshua (1563-1618) 34

THOMSON, James (1700-1748) 158, 172

VAUGHAN, Henry (1621-1695) 98, 138, 150

WALLER, Edmund (1605-1687) 115, 122

WEBSTER, John (---- -1638?) 66

WILMOT, John (1647-1680) 107

WITHER, George (1588-1667) 131

WOLFE, Charles (1791-1823) 262, 277

WORDSWORTH, William (1770-1850) 217, 220, 221, 222, 223, 226, 233,

244, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258,

263, 267, 284, 286, 288, 289, 291,

294, 296, 297, 298, 299, 301, 302,

305, 306, 309, 313, 317, 319, 320,

323, 325, 326, 327, 330, 331, 336,

337, 338

WOTTON, Henry (1568-1639) 95, 110

WYAT, Thomas (1503-1542) 28, 44

ANONYMOUS, 8, 20, 21, 22, 30, 33, 36, 53,

54, 57, 70, 104, 114, 117, 121,

125, 133, 135, 136, 164, 195

134 is by Richard Verstegan (-c. 1635).

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

PAGE

A Chieftain to the Highlands bound 211

A child's a plaything for an hour 270

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 305

A slumber did my spirit seal 210

A sweet disorder in the dress 95

A weary lot is thine, fair maid 225

A wet sheet and a flowing sea 235

Absence, hear thou this protestation 8

Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit 86

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh 217

All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd 149

All thoughts, all passions, all delights 199

And are ye sure the news is true 181

And is this--Yarrow?--This the Stream 297

And thou art dead, as young and fair 231

And wilt thou leave me thus 26

Ariel to Miranda:--Take 288

Art thou pale for weariness 305

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers 50

As it fell upon a day 27

As I was walking all alane 107

As slow our ship her foamy track 251

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears 288

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly 230

Avenge, O Lord! Thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones 64

Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake 157

Awake, awake, my Lyre 101

Bards of Passion and of Mirth 197

Beauty sat bathing by a spring 13

Behold her, single in the field 287

Being your slave, what should I do but tend 9

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 277

Best and brightest, come away 299

Bid me to live, and I will live 97

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy 125

Blow, blow, thou winter wind 34

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art 228

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren 41

Calm was the day, and through the trembling air 45

Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms 75

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the Sable Night 28

Come away, come away, Death 38

Come, cheerful day, part of my life to me 51

Come little babe, come silly soul 35

Come live with me and be my Love 5

Come, Sleep: O Sleep! the certain knot of peace 24

Come unto these yellow sands 2

Crabbed Age and Youth 6

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd 44

Cyriack, whose grandsire, on the royal bench 80

Daughter of Jove, relentless power 188

Daughter to that good Earl, once President 89

Degenerate Douglas! oh, the unworthy lord 283

Doth then the world go thus, doth all thus move 54

Down in yon garden sweet and gay 147

Drink to me only with thine eyes 92

Duncan Gray cam here to woo 180

Earl March look'd on his dying child 228

Earth has not anything to show more fair 281

E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks 96

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind 240

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky 273

Ever let the Fancy roam 310

Fain would I change that note 6

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see 111

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree 110

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing 25

Fear no more the heat o' the sun 40

Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new 22

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow 30

For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove 155

Forget not yet the tried intent 18

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year 339

From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony 63

From Stirling Castle we had seen 295

Full fathom five thy father lies 40

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may 87

Gem of the crimson-colour'd Even 218

Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn 93

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine 152

Go, lovely Rose 91

Hail thou most sacred venerable thing 128

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit 274

Happy the man, whose wish and care 136

Happy those early days, when I 78

Happy were he could finish forth his fate 55

He that loves a rosy cheek 90

He is gone on the mountain 264

Hence, all you vain delights 103

Hence, loathéd Melancholy 116

Hence, vain deluding Joys 120

He sang of God, the mighty source 164

High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be 9

How happy is he born and taught 76

How like a winter hath my absence been 10

How sleep the brave who sink to rest 144

How sweet the answer Echo makes 217

How vainly men themselves amaze 113

I am monarch of all I survey 190

I arise from dreams of Thee 205

I cannot change, as others do 87

I dream'd that as I wander'd by the way 307

I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden 208

I have had playmates, I have had companions 250

I have no name 165

I heard a thousand blended notes 312

I meet thy pensive, moonlight face 211

I met a traveller from an antique land 282

I remember, I remember 254

I saw Eternity the other night 129

I saw her in childhood 265

I saw my lady weep 19

I saw where in the shroud did lurk 268

I travell'd among unknown men 208

I wander'd lonely as a cloud 291

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile 327

I wish I were where Helen lies 106

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song 170

If doughty deeds my lady please 153

If I had thought thou couldst have died 263

If Thou survive my well-contented day 41

If to be absent were to be 100

I'm wearing awa', Jean 184

In a drear-nighted December 222

In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining 195

In the sweet shire of Cardigan 248

In this still place, remote from men 329

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 308

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free 303

It is not growing like a tree 77

It was a dismal and a fearful night 108

It was a lover and his lass 8

It was a summer evening 244

I've heard them lilting at our ewe-milking 145

Jack and Joan, they think no ill 115

John Anderson my jo, John 185

Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting 43

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son 79

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 20

Life! I know not what thou art 196

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore 25

Like to the clear in highest sphere 12

Love in my bosom, like a bee 43

Love in thy youth, fair Maid, be wise 90

Love not me for comely grace 98

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours 166

Many a green isle needs must be 320

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings 191

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour 242

Mine be a cot beside the hill 169

Mortality, behold and fear 73

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 309

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold 199

Music, when soft voices die 346

My days among the Dead are past 257

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 279

My heart leaps up when I behold 341

My Love in her attire doth shew her wit 96

My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow 39

My thoughts hold mortal strife 38

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his 20

Never love unless you can 16

Never seek to tell thy love 156

No longer mourn for me when I am dead 42

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note 247

Not, Celia, that I juster am 98

Now the golden Morn aloft 133

Now the last day of many days 301

O blithe new-comer! I have heard 278

O Brignall banks are wild and fair 203

O Friend! I know not which way I must look 242

O happy shades! to me unblest 188

O if thou knew'st how thou thyself dost harm 18

O leave this barren spot to me 283

O listen, listen, ladies gay 266

O lovers' eyes are sharp to see 227

O Mary, at thy window be 175

O me! what eyes hath love put in my head 31

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming 22

O my Luve's like a red, red rose 177

O never say that I was false of heart 11

O saw ye bonnie Lesley 176

O say what is that thing call'd Light 136

O talk not to me of a name great in story 202

O Thou, by Nature taught 134

O waly waly up the bank 104

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms 224

O wild West Wind, thou breath Of Autumn's being 325

O World! O Life! O Time 340

Obscurest night involved the sky 193

Of all the girls that are so smart 151

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw 183

Of Nelson and the North 237

Of Neptune's empire let us sing 80

Of this fair volume which we World do name 53

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray 213

Oft in the stilly night 255

Oh snatch'd away in beauty's bloom 262

On a day, alack the day 17

On a Poet's lips I slept 329

Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee 241

One more Unfortunate 259

One word is too often profaned 233

On Linden, when the sun was low 243

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd 306

Over the mountains 84

Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day 45

Phoebus, arise 2

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu 233

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth 52

Proud Maisie is in the wood 258

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair 81

Rough Wind, that moanest loud 339

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King 140

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness 293

See with what simplicity 85

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day 15

Shall I, wasting in despair 102

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 208

She is not fair to outward view 207

She walks in beauty, like the night 206

She was a Phantom of delight 206

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea 4

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part 30

Sleep, angry beauty, sleep and fear not me 31

Sleep on, and dream of Heaven awhile 154

Sleep, sleep, beauty bright 165

Souls of Poets dead and gone 257

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king 1

Star that bringest home the bee 304

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 239

Surprized by joy--impatient as the wind 230

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes 90

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower 285

Sweet Love, if thou wilt gain a monarch's glory 14

Sweet stream, that winds through yonder glade 154

Swiftly walk over the western wave 219

Take, O take those lips away 29

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense 331

Tell me not, Sweet, I an unkind 88

Tell me where is Fancy bred 42

That time of year thou may'st in me behold 23

That which her slender waist confined 96

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day 172

The forward youth that would appear 65

The fountains mingle with the river 216

The glories of our blood and state 74

The last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King 55

The lovely lass o' Inverness 144

The man of life upright 52

The merchant, to secure his treasure 155

The more we live, more brief appear 338

The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth 28

The poplars are fell'd; farewell to the shade 167

There be none of Beauty's daughters 204

There is a flower, the lesser Celandine 253

There is a garden in her face 92

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away 252

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass 340

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream 341

The sea hath many thousand sands 33

The sun is warm, the sky is clear 256

The sun upon the lake is low 304

The twentieth year is well-nigh past 192

The world is too much with us; late and soon 330

They are all gone into the world of light 109

They that have power to hurt, and will do none 26

This is the month, and this the happy morn 56

This Life, which seems so fair 51

Though others may her brow adore 21

Thou art not fair, for all thy red and white 34

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness 331

Three years she grew in sun and shower 209

Thy braes were bonny, Yarrow stream 146

Timely blossom, Infant fair 138

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry 54

Toll for the Brave 148

To me, fair Friend, you never can be old 11

To one who has been long in city pent 282

Turn back, you wanton flyer 16

'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won 129

'Twas on a lofty vase's side 137

Two Voices are there; one is of the Sea 241

Under the greenwood tree 7

Upon my lap my sovereign sits 105

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying 333

Victorious men of earth, no more 74

Waken, lords and ladies gay 272

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie 168

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee 37

Weep you no more, sad fountains 14

Were I as base as is the lowly plain 21

We talk'd with open heart, and tongue 336

We walk'd along, while bright and red 334

We watch'd her breathing thro' the night 265

Whenas in silks my Julia goes 95

When Britain first at Heaven's command 139

When first the fiery-mantled Sun 294

When God at first made Man 78

When he who adores thee has left but the name 246

When icicles hang by the wall 23

When I consider how my light is spent 76

When I have borne in memory what has tamed 243

When I have fears that I may cease to be 229

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced 4

When I survey the bright 126

When I think on the happy days 182

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes 10

When in the chronicle of wasted time 15

When lovely woman stoops to folly 156

When Love with unconfinéd wings 99

When maidens such as Hester die 262

When Music, heavenly maid, was young 161

When Ruth was left half desolate 313

When the lamp is shatter'd 226

When the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame 178

When thou must home to shades of underground 37

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 24

When we two parted 221

Where art thou, my beloved Son 270

Where shall the lover rest 222

Where the bee sucks, there suck I 2

Where the remote Bermudas ride 124

Whether on Ida's shady brow 197

While that the sun with his beams hot 32

Whoe'er she be 82

Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant 220

Why so pale and wan, fond lover 100

Why weep ye by the tide, ladie 215

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies 36

With little here to do or see 291

With sweetest milk and sugar first 112

Ye banks and braes and streams around 177

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon 157

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers 185

Ye Mariners of England 235

Yes, there is holy pleasure in thine eye 284

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 68

You meaner beauties of the night 88

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