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Sonnet.
With wayworn feet a Pilgrim woe-begone Life's upward road I journeyed many a day, And hymning many a sad yet soothing layBeguil'd my wandering with the charms of song. Lonely my heart and rugged was my way,Yet often pluck'd I as I past along The wild and simple flowers of Poesy,And as beseem'd the wayward Fancy's child Entwin'd each random weed that pleas'd mine eye.Accept the wreath, BELOVED! it is wild And rudely garlanded; yet scorn not thouThe humble offering, where the sad rue weaves'Mid gayer flowers its intermingled leaves, And I have twin'd the myrtle for thy brow.
Robert Southey
Sunset
From this windy bridge at rest,In some former curious hour,We have watched the city's hue,All along the orange west,Cupola and pointed tower,Darken into solid blue.Tho' the biting north wind breaksFull across this drifted hold,Let us stand with icèd cheeksWatching westward as of old;Past the violet mountain-headTo the farthest fringe of pine,Where far off the purple-redNarrows to a dusky line,And the last pale splendors dieSlowly from the olive sky;Till the thin clouds wear awayInto threads of purple-gray,And the sudden stars betweenBrighten in the pallid green;Till above the spacious east,Slow returnèd one by one,Like pale prisoners releasedFrom the dungeons of the sun,Cap...
Archibald Lampman
Hymn Of The Moravian Nuns Of Bethlehem At The Consecration Of Pulaski's Banner.
When the dying flame of dayThrough the chancel shot its ray,Far the glimmering tapers shedFaint light on the cowled head;And the censer burning swung,Where, before the altar, hungThe crimson banner, that with prayerHad been consecrated there.And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while,Sung low, in the dim, mysterious aisle. "Take thy banner! May it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the sabbath of our vale. When the clarion's music thrills To the hearts of these lone hills, When the spear in conflict shakes, And the strong lance shivering breaks. "Take thy banner! and, beneath The battle-cloud's encircling wre...
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Moon-Path
The full, clear moon uprose and spreadHer cold, pale splendor o'er the sea;A light-strewn path that seemed to leadOutward into eternity.Between the darkness and the gleamAn old-world spell encompassed me:Methought that in a godlike dreamI trod upon the sea.And lo! upon that glimmering road,In shining companies unfurled,The trains of many a primal god,The monsters of the elder world;Strange creatures that, with silver wings,Scarce touched the ocean's thronging floor,The phantoms of old tales, and thingsWhose shapes are known no more.Giants and demi-gods who onceWere dwellers of the earth and sea,And they who from Deucalion's stones,Rose men without an infancy;Beings on whose majestic lidsTime's solemn se...
To An Old Danish Song-Book
Welcome, my old friend,Welcome to a foreign fireside,While the sullen gales of autumnShake the windows.The ungrateful worldHas, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,First I met thee.There are marks of age,There are thumb-marks on thy margin,Made by hands that clasped thee rudely,At the alehouse.Soiled and dull thou art;Yellow are thy time-worn pages,As the russet, rain-molestedLeaves of autumn.Thou art stained with wineScattered from hilarious goblets,As the leaves with the libationsOf Olympus.Yet dost thou recallDays departed, half-forgotten,When in dreamy youth I wanderedBy the Baltic,--When I paused to hearThe old ballad...
Paradisum Amissam, Lib. II
Quales aerii montis de vertice nubesCum surgunt, et jam Boreae tumida ora quierunt,Caelum hilares abdit spissa caligine vultus,Nimbosumque nives aut imbres cogitat aether:Tum si jucundo tandem sol prodeat ore,Et croceo montes et pascua lumine tingat,Gaudent omnia, aves mulcent concentibus agros,Balatuque ovium colles vallesque resultant.
John Milton
Marmion: Introduction To Canto III.
Like April morning clouds, that pass,With varying shadow, o'er the grass,And imitate, on field and furrow,Life's chequered scene of joy and sorrow;Like streamlet of the mountain North,Now in a torrent racing forth,Now winding slow its silver train,And almost slumbering on the plain;Like breezes of the Autumn day,Whose voice inconstant dies away,And ever swells again as fast,When the ear deems its murmur past;Thus various, my romantic themeFlits, winds, or sinks, a morning dream.Yet pleased, our eye pursues the traceOf light and shade's inconstant race;Pleased, views the rivulet afar,Weaving its maze irregular;And pleased, we listen as the breezeHeaves its wild sigh through Autumn trees;Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or ...
Walter Scott
St. Jerome On Earth.
FIRST VISIT.1832.As St. Jerome who died some ages ago,Was sitting one day in the shades below,"I've heard much of English bishops," quoth he,"And shall now take a trip to earth to see"How far they agree in their lives and ways"With our good old bishops of ancient days."He had learned--but learned without misgivings--Their love for good living and eke good livings;Not knowing (as ne'er having taken degrees)That good living means claret and fricassees,While its plural means simply--pluralities."From all I hear," said the innocent man,"They are quite on the good old primitive plan."For wealth and pomp they little can care,"As they all say 'No' to the Episcopal chair;"And their vestal virtue it well...
Thomas Moore
Wooing-Stuff
Faint amorist, what, dost thou thinkTo taste Love's honey, and not drinkOne dram of gall? or to devourA world of sweet, and taste no sour?Dost thou ever think to enterTh' Elysian fields, that dar'st not ventureIn Charon's barge? a lover's mindMust use to sail with every wind.He that loves and fears to try,Learns his mistress to deny.Doth she chide thee? 'tis to show it,That thy coldness makes her do it:Is she silent? is she mute?Silence fully grants thy suit:Doth she pout, and leave the room?Then she goes to bid thee come:Is she sick? why then be sure,She invites thee to the cure:Doth she cross thy suit with "No?"Tush, she loves to hear thee woo:Doth she call the faith of manIn question? Nay, she loves thee than...
Philip Sidney
Inscriptions For A Seat In The Groves Of Coleorton
Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest groundStand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view,The ivied Ruins of forlorn GRACE DIEU;Erst a religious House, which day and nightWith hymns resounded, and the chanted rite:And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birthTo honourable Men of various worth:There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child;There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreamsOf slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,With which his genius shook the buskined stage.Communities are lost, and Empires die,And things...
William Wordsworth
A Night Thought.
How oft a cloud, with envious veil, Obscures yon bashful light,Which seems so modestly to steal Along the waste of night!'Tis thus the world's obtrusive wrongs Obscure with malice keenSome timid heart, which only longs To live and die unseen.
The Picture
Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay:Around her, flowers flattered earth with gold,Or down the path in insolence held swayLike cavaliers who ride the king's highwayScarlet and buff, within a garden old.Beyond the hills, faint-heard through belts of wood,Bells, Sabbath-sweet, swooned from some far-off town:Gamboge and gold, broad sunset colors strewedThe purple west as if, with God imbued,Her mighty palette Nature there laid down.Amid such flowers, underneath such skies,Embodying all life knows of sweet and fair,She stood; love's dreams in girlhood's face and eyes,Fair as a star that comes to emphasizeThe mingled beauty of the earth and air.Behind her, seen through vines and orchard trees,Gray with its twinkling windows like the faceO...
Madison Julius Cawein
Sonnet XL.
Se mai foco per foco non si spense.HIS HEART IS ALL IN FLAMES, BUT HIS TONGUE IS MUTE, IN HER PRESENCE. If fire was never yet by fire subdued,If never flood fell dry by frequent rain,But, like to like, if each by other gain,And contraries are often mutual food;Love, who our thoughts controllest in each mood,Through whom two bodies thus one soul sustain,How, why in her, with such unusual strainMake the want less by wishes long renewed?Perchance, as falleth the broad Nile from high,Deafening with his great voice all nature round,And as the sun still dazzles the fix'd eye,So with itself desire in discord foundLoses in its impetuous object force,As the too frequent spur oft checks the course.MACGREGOR.
Francesco Petrarca
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXVIII
Stella, the onely planet of my light,Light of my life, and life of my desire,Chiefe good whereto my hope doth only aspire,World of my wealth, and heau'n of my delight;Why dost thou spend the treasures of thy spriteWith voice more fit to wed Amphions lyre,Seeking to quench in me the noble fireFed by thy worth, and kindled by thy sight?And all in vaine: for while thy breath most sweetWith choisest words, thy words with reasons rare,Thy reasons firmly set on Vertues feet,Labour to kill in me this killing care:O thinke I then, what paradise of ioyIt is, so faire a vertue to enioy!
Uranus1
When on the primal peaceful blank profound,Which in its still unknowing silence holdsAll knowledge, ever by withholding holds,When on that void (like footfalls in far rooms),In faint pulsations from the whitening EastArticulate voices first were felt to stir,And the great child, in dreaming grown to man,Losing his dream to piece it up began;Then Plato in me said,Tis but the figured ceiling overhead,With cunning diagrams bestarred, that shineIn all the three dimensions, are endowedWith motion too by skill mechanical,That thou in height, and depth, and breadth, and power.Schooled unto pure Mathesis, might proceedTo higher entities, whereof in usCopies are seen, existent they themselvesIn the sole kingdom of the Mind and God.Mind not...
Arthur Hugh Clough
St Peter's Denial
What, then, has God to say of cursing heresies,Which rise up like a flood at precious angels' feet?A self-indulgent tyrant, stuffed with wine and meat,He sleeps to soothing sounds of monstrous blasphemies.The sobs of martyred saints and groans of tortured menNo doubt provide the Lord with rapturous symphonies.And yet the heavenly hosts are scarcely even pleasedIn spite of all the blood men dedicate to them.Jesus, do you recall the grove of olive treesWhere on your knees, in your simplicity, you prayedTo Him who sat and heard the noise the nailing madeIn your live flesh, as villains did their awful deed,When you saw, spitting on your pure divinity,Scum from the kitchens, outcasts, guardsmen in disgrace,And felt the crown of thorns around y...
Charles Baudelaire
The Goose
I knew an old wife lean and poor,Her rags scarce held together;There strode a stranger to the door,And it was windy weather.He held a goose upon his arm,He utterd rhyme and reason:Here, take the goose, and keep you warmIt is a stormy season.She caught the white goose by the leg,A goosetwas no great matter.The goose let fall a golden eggWith cackle and with clatter.She dropt the goose, and caught the pelf,And ran to tell her neighbors,And blessd herself, and cursed herself,And rested from her labors;And feeding high, and living soft,Grew plump and able-bodied,Until the grave churchwarden doffd,The parson smirkd and nodded.So sitting, served by man and maid,She felt her heart gro...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
To Eleonora Duse I
Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears,Where every passing anguish left its trace,I pray you grant to me this depth of grace:That I may see before it disappears,Blown through the gateway of our hopes and fearsTo death's insatiable last embrace,The glory and the sadness of your face,Its longing unappeased through all the years.No bitterness beneath your sorrow clings;Within the wild dark falling of your hairThere lies a strength that ever soars and sings;Your mouth's mute weariness is not despair.Perhaps among us craven earth-born thingsGod loves its silence better than a prayer.
Sara Teasdale