Soft Light

In its stream immersed,     The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;         All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst,     Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Moon-lit Sparks

A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Paul Revere's Ride

Gaze

So, purposing each moment to retire,     She lingered still, Meantime, across the moors,     Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire     For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,     Buttressed from moonlight, stands he, and implores     All saints to give him sight of Madeline,     But for one moment in the tedious hours,     That he might gaze and worship all unseen; Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss--in sooth such things have been. -John Keats (1795-1821), The Eve of St. Agnes

Night Watch

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town And the moonlight flowing over all. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Paul Revere's Ride

Realm of Gold

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,     And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; -John Keats (1795-1821), On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Lost Dreams

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,     And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hesperides     Of all my boyish dreams.         And the burden of that old song,         It murmurs and whispers still:     "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), My Lost Youth