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





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





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





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





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





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





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





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





Let There Be Light

Let there be light.

-The Old Testament,
Genesis 1:1-3





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





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





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





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





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





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






images © 1999 by Randy Wang
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