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.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Kubla Khan, 1798
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Flight of Imagination
On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. -William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Where the Bee Sucks, There Suck I, from The Tempest |
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Acrobats
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-ey'd bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: -William Collins (1721-1759), Ode to Evening |
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Aspring Wings
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 (1757-1827), The Tyger |
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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. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, 1798 |
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Roof of Gold
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of Polished pillars, or a roof of gold; -Ben Johnson (1572-1637), To Penshurst |
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Memory of Remote Time
Friends depart, and memory takes them To Her caverns, pure and deep. -Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839), Teach Me to Forget |
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Window of Dreams
I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me--who knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Indian Serenade, 1822 |
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Let There Be Light
Let there be light. -The Old Testament, Genesis 1:1-3 |
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Shadow of Death
He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death. -The Old Testament, Job 12:22 |
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Pillar of Gold
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of Polished pillars, or a roof of gold; -Ben Johnson (1572-1637), To Penshurst |
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A Long Lost Legend
She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, sweetest of the year. Asleep in lap of legends old. -John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes, 1820 |
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Soul Mates
If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th' other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th' other foot, obliquely run; The firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. -John Donne (1572-1631), A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning |
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Gold
She is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold. -William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Two Gentlemen of Verona |
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Mild Whispers
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. -John Milton (1608-1674), Lycidas |