Spirits of Light

Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth;         As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light         Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might     Satiate the void circumference: then shrink         Even to a point within our day and night;     And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink, When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Silken Mystery

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?     To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,     And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn

Burst of Life

Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,     A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst, -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Elfland

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,     And thinner, clearer, farther going! O, sweet and far from cliff and scar     The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), The Splendor Falls

So Much Melody

In the green water, clear and warm, Susanna lay. She searched The touch of springs, And found Concealed imaginings. She sighed, For so much melody. Upon the bank, she stood In the cool Of spent emotions. She felt, among the leaves, The dew Of old devotions. She walked upon the grass, Still quavering. The winds were like her maids, On timid feet, Fetching her woven scarves, Yet wavering. A breath upon her hand Muted the night. She turned-- A cymbal crashed, And roraring horns. -Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), Peter Quince at the Clavier

Being

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Rhodora On Being Asked, Whence is The Flower?

Happy Boughs

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed     Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn

Melodious Green

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,     But being too happy in thine happiness,--         That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,             In some melodious plot     Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,         Singest of summer in full-throated ease. -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

Those who have gone before

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?     Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?     They will not keep you waiting at that door. -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill

Slumber

Pale, without name or number,     In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber     All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated     Comes out of darkness morn. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), The Garden of Proserpine

Starry Heaven

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,     Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,     "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? -Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Afterwards

Fading Splendor

And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,     And all the Echoes whom their Sister's song         Had held in holy silence, cried "Arise";     Swift as a thought by the snake Memory stung, From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Murmur in the Wind

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane     In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain     Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to Psyche

Fairy Seas

The voice I hear this passing night was heard     In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path     Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,         She stood in tears amid the alien corn;             The same that oft-times hath     Charm'd magic casement, opening on the foam         Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

Ebb and Flow

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. -Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Dover Beach

I Hear

And I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Quiet Shores

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams, Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, And lapsing waves on quiet shores. -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Unreflecting Love

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,     That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power     Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. -John Keats (1795-1821), When I Have Fears

Dark Sails

The breath whose might I have invoked in song         Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven     Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng         Whose sails were never to the tempest given.         The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven!     I am borne darkly, fearfully afar!         Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven,     The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Lost Angel

Lost angel of a ruined paradise!     She knew not 'twas her own,--as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Longing

I long for scenes where man has never trod,     A place where woman never smiled or wept-- There to abide with my Creator, God,     And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, The grass below--above the vaulted sky. -John Clare (1793-1864), I am, written while he was confined in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton, where he spent about the last third of his life.

Mystic Tides

He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Paul Revere's Ride