In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

-William Blake,
Songs of Experience,
The Tyger
, 1794





Chariots of Fire

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

-William Blake, And Did Those Feet





Sunset Tree

Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone.

-Felicia Dorothea Hemans,
Tyrolese Evening Song





Flying Cloud

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
    The flying cloud, the frosty light

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
In Momoriam A. H. H., 1850





Silent Laughter

For after the rain when with never a stain
      The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
      Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
      And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
      I arise and unbuild it again.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Cloud, 1820





Happy Melodies

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;

-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn





Wind of Night

Thine eyes glow'd in the glare
    Of the moon's dying light;
          As a fen-fire's beam
          On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly--so the moon shone there,
And it yellow'd the strings of thy tangled hair,
        That shook in the wind of night.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Lines: The cold earth slept below, 1823





Flush of Rage

On the earl's cheek the flush of rage
O'ercame the ashen hue of age

-Sir Walter Scott,Marmion, 1808





Pleasure

    But pleasures are like poppies spread,
  You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.

-Robert Burns,
Tam O'Shanter: A Tale, 1791






images © 1998 by Randy Wang
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