Mia benigna fortuna e 'l viver lieto.

IN HIS MISERY HE DESIRES DEATH THE MORE HE REMEMBERS HIS PAST CONTENTMENT AND COMFORT.


    My favouring fortune and my life of joy,
My days so cloudless, and my tranquil nights,
The tender sigh, the pleasing power of song,
Which gently wont to sound in verse and rhyme,
Suddenly darken'd into grief and tears,
Make me hate life and inly pray for death!

O cruel, grim, inexorable Death!
How hast thou dried my every source of joy,
And left me to drag on a life of tears,
Through darkling days and melancholy nights.
My heavy sighs no longer meet in rhyme,
And my hard martyrdom exceeds all song!

Where now is vanish'd my once amorous song?
To talk of anger and to treat with death;
Where the fond...

A song in a cornfield
    Where corn begins to fall,
Where reapers are reaping,
    Reaping one, reaping all.
Sing pretty Lettice,
    Sing Rachel, sing May;
Only Marian cannot sing
    While her sweetheart's away.

Where is he gone to
    And why does he stay?
He came across the green sea
    But for a day,
Across the deep green sea
    To help with the hay.

His hair was curly yellow
    And his eyes were grey,
He laughed a merry laugh
    And said a sweet say.
Where is he gone to
    That he comes not home?
To-day or to-morrow
    He surely will come.
Let him haste to joy
    Lest he lag for sorrow,
For one weeps to-day
    Who'll not weep to-morrow:
To-day she must weep
    For gnawing sorrow...

"Bring out your dead!" The midnight street
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,
Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,
Her coffin and her pall.
"What, only one!" the brutal hack-man said,
As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
The dying turned him to the wall,
To hear it and to die!
Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;
"Toss in your load!" and it was done.
With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave's embrace
They cast them, one by one,
Stranger and friend, the evi...

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. -Vain sympathies!
For backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish; -be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.

Friend of the lonely hour, from thy lov'd strain
The magic pow'r of pleasure have I known:
Awhile I lose remembrance of my pain,
And seem to taste of joys that long had flown.
When o'er my suffering soul reflection casts
The gloom of sorrow's sable-shadowing veil,
Recalling sad misfortunes chilling blasts
How sweet to thee to tell the mournful tale!
And tho' denied to me the strings to move
Like heavenly-gifted bards, to whom belong
The power to melt the yielding soul to love,
Or wake to war, with energetic song.
Yet thou, my Lyre, canst cheer the gloomy hour,
When sullen grief asserts her tyrant pow'r.

    He who by a mother's love
        Made the wandering world his own,
    Every year comes from above,
        Comes the parted to atone,
        Binding Earth to the Father's throne.

    Nay, thou comest every day!
        No, thou never didst depart!
    Never hour hast been away!
        Always with us, Lord, thou art,
        Binding, binding heart to heart!

Sweet Hope, so oft my childhood's friend,
I will believe thee still,
For thou canst joy with sorrow blend,
Where grief alone would kill.

When disappointments wrung my heart,
Ill brook'd in tender years,
Thou, like a sun, perform'dst thy part,
And dried my infant tears.

When late I wore the bloom of health,
And love had bound me fast,
My buoyant heart would sigh by stealth
For fear it might not last.

My sickness came, my bloom decay'd,
But Philip still was by;
And thou, sweet Hope, so kindly said,
"He'll weep if thou should'st die."

Thou told'st me too, that genial Spring
Would bring me health again;
I feel its power, but cannot sing
Its glories yet for pain.

But thou canst still my heart inspire,
And Heave...

Oimè il bel viso! oimè il soave sguardo!

ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF LAURA.


    Woe for the 'witching look of that fair face!
The port where ease with dignity combined!
Woe for those accents, that each savage mind
To softness tuned, to noblest thoughts the base!
And the sweet smile, from whence the dart I trace,
Which now leaves death my only hope behind!
Exalted soul, most fit on thrones to 've shined,
But that too late she came this earth to grace!
For you I still must burn, and breathe in you;
For I was ever yours; of you bereft,
Full little now I reck all other care.
With hope and with desire you thrill'd me through,
When last my only joy on earth I left:--
But caught by winds each word was lost in air.

ANON., OX., 17...

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses.
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.

Yet pure its waters, its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams...

    'Oh my heart is sad and weary
    Everywhere I roam,
    Longing for the old plantation
    And for the old folks at home.'

The air is dark and fragrant
    With memories of a shower,
And sanctified with stillness
    By this most holy hour.

The leaves forget to whisper
    Of soft and secret things,
And every bird is silent,
    With folded eyes and wings.

O blessed hour of midnight,
    Of sleep and of release,
Thou yieldest to the toiler
    The wages of thy peace.

And I, who have not laboured,
    Nor borne the heat of noon,
Receive thy tranquil quiet--
    An undeserved boon.

Yes, truly God is gracious,
    Who makes His sun to shine
Upon the good and evil,
    And idle lives like mine.

Upon the just and unjust
    He sends His rain to fall,
And gives this hour of blessing
    Freely alike to all.

Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
And jay and nut-hatch winter’s threat defy.

O gracious beauty, ever new a...

        Fair, sweet, and young, receive a prize
        Reserved for your victorious eyes:
        From crowds, whom at your feet you see,
        O pity, and distinguish me!
        As I from thousand beauties more
        Distinguish you, and only you adore.

        Your face for conquest was design'd,
        Your every motion charms my mind;
        Angels, when you your silence break,
        Forget their hymns, to hear you speak;
        But when at once they hear and view,
        Are loth to mount, and long to stay with you.

        No graces can your form improve,
        But all are lost, unless you love;
        While that sweet passion you disdain,
        Your veil and beauty are in vain:
        In pity then prevent my fate,
    ...

In search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing alas!
Lost is all power of flight
He scarce can lift himself
From off the ground
To catch some mean, unworthy prey,
And rests, deep-sorrowing,
On the low rock beside the stream.
Up to the oak he looks,
Looks up to heaven,
While in his noble eye there gleams a tear.
Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold,
There comes a wanton pair of...

Thou art my thought, my heart, my being's fortune,
    The search for thee my growth's first conscious date;
For nought, for everything, I thee importune;
    Thou art my all, my origin and fate!

The stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!"

Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (EVEN SO
GOD OUT OF HEAVEN MAY LAUGH TO SEE
THE HAPPY CROWDS; AND NEVER KNOW
THAT IN HIS LONE OBSCURE DISTRESS
EACH WALKETH IN A WILDERNESS).

But I, remembering, pitied well
And loved them, who, with lonely light,
In empty infinite spaces dwell,
Disconsolate. For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.

Dell' empia Babilonia, ond' è fuggita.

LEAVING ROME, HE DESIRES ONLY PEACE WITH LAURA AND PROSPERITY TO COLONNA.


    Yes, out of impious Babylon I'm flown,
Whence flown all shame, whence banish'd is all good,
That nurse of error, and of guilt th' abode,
To lengthen out a life which else were gone:
There as Love prompts, while wandering alone,
I now a garland weave, and now an ode;
With him I commune, and in pensive mood
Hope better times; this only checks my moan.
Nor for the throng, nor fortune do I care,
Nor for myself, nor sublunary things,
No ardour outwardly, or inly springs:
I ask two persons only: let my fair
For me a kind and tender heart maintain;
And be my friend secure in his high post again.

NOTT.


   ...