Kindling the Universe

That light whose smile kindles the universe,         That beauty in which all things work and move,     That benediction which the eclipsing curse         Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love         Which, through the web of being blindly wove     By man and beast and earth and air and sea,         Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of     The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Yearnings in the Night

I can give not what men call love,     But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above     And the Heavens reject not,-- The desire of the moth for the star,     Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar     From the sphere of our sorrow? -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), To __

Haunted Forest

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,     Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs,     Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retired     From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,     Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan         Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet     From swingèd censer teeming: Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat     Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming. -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to Psyche

Passion of the Night

I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; -Thomas Hood (1799-1845), I Remember, I Remember

Tumultuous Storm

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Snow-Storm

Hallowed Hour

She danced along with vague, regardless eyes;     Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:     The hallowed hour was near at hand: she sighs     Amid the timbrels, and the thronged resort     Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;     'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,     Hoodwinked with faery fancy; all amort,     Save to St Agnes and her lambs unshorn, And all the bliss to be before tomorrow morn. -John Keats (1795-1821), The Eve of St. Agnes

Midnight Ecstasy

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,     To cease upon the midnight with no pain,         While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad             In such an ecstasy! -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

Unimprisoned Flames

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,         But grief returns with the revolving year.     The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;         The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;         Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;     The amorous birds now pair in every brake,         And build their mossy homes in field and brere;     And the green lizard and the golden snake, Like unimpresoned flames, out of their trance awake. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Baffled Rage

Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Night and the Wind

What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Dust to Dust

Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow     Back to the burning fountain whence he came,         A portion of the Eternal, which must glow     Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Too Lofty to Rage

Your destination and your destiny's A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. -Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), Directive

Grief

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down     Her kindling buds; as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,     For whom should she have waked the sullen Year? -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Hide and Seek

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,     Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight     The Mænad and the Bassarid; And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight     The god pursuing, the maiden hid. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), When the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter's Traces

Dancer

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Among School Children, 1927

Courtship

The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Rhodora On Being Asked, Whence is The Flower?

Journey

Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right-- The leaves upon her falling light-- Through the noises of the night     She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song,     The Lady of Shalott. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), The Lady of Shalott

Sorrow's Springs

Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves, líke the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Through worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow's spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. -Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), Spring and Fall

Fishermen

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night     Sailed off in a wooden shoe-- Sailed on a river of crystal light,     Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?"     The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring fish     That live in this beautiful sea;     Nets of silver and gold have we!" Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. -Eugene Field (1850 - 1895), Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

Escape

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went. -Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917), The Owl

Ghostly Dance

With mop and mow, we saw them go,     Slim shadows hand in hand: About, about, in ghostly rout     They trod a saraband: -Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Beauty and the Beast

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Leda and the Swan

Phantom Tryst

They glided past, they glided fast,     Like travellers through a mist: They mocked the moon in a rigadoon     Of delicate turn and twist, And with formal pace and loathsome grace     The phantoms kept their tryst. -Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Passion and Conquest

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), The Wild Swans at Coole

Quiver

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,     Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers,     With a clamour of waters, and with might; -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), When the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter's Traces

Grief of Falling Water

For brief as water falling will be death, and brief as flower falling, or a leaf, brief as the taking, and the giving, breath; thus natural, thus brief, my love, is grief. -Conrad Aiken (1889 - 1973), And in the Human Heart (1940). Sonnet 6

Grief Forgotten

For winter's rains and ruins are over,     And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,     The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover     Blossom by blossom the spring begins. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), When the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter's Traces

Ripening Stream

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,     Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes     From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes     The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), When the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter's Traces

Glitter

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare     The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), When the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter's Traces

Tears and Laughter

I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), The Garden of Proserpine

Fall Grief

Droop herbs and flowers;     Fall grief in showers;     "Our beauties are not ours" -Ben Johnson (1572-1637), Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount, Keep Time with My Salt Tears, from Cynthia's Revels

Time and Change

O Time and Change!---with hair as gray As my sire's that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of life and love, to still live on! -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Where are you from?

Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,     And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom                 Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,     Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air                 Bloom the year long! -Robert Bridges (1844-1930), Nightingales

Faith

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Deck the Season

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,     But grief returns with the revolving year. The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;     The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;     Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier; -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,     Gone far away into the silent land;     When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day     You tell me of our future that you planned:     Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while     And afterwards remember, do not grieve:     For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile     Than that you should remember and be sad. -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill

Smiles and Tears

I love thee with the breath. Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. -Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

Happy Nest

My heart is like a singing bird     Whose nest is in a watered shoot; -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill

Leafless Blooms

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Rhodora On Being Asked, Whence is The Flower?

Unimprisoned Flames

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,         But grief returns with the revolving year.     The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;         The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;         Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;     The amorous birds now pair in every brake,         And build their mossy homes in field and brere;     And the green lizard and the golden snake, Like unimpresoned flames, out of their trance awake. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

If You Listen

The leaves will whisper there of her, and some, Like flying words, will strike you as they fall; But go, and if you listen she will call. Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal-- Luke Havergal. -Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), Luke Havergal

Waking Dream

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades     Past the near meadows, over the still stream,         Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep             In the next valley-glades:     Was it a vision, or a waking dream?         Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep? -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

The voice

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard to more again far or near?     Thus I; faltering forward,     Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,     And the woman calling. -Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), The Voice

Longing Heart

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,     And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were,     I find my lost youth again.         And the strange and beautiful song,         The groves are repeating it 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

Resting Place

But is there for the night a resting-place?     A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin, May not the darkness hide it from my face?     You cannot miss that inn. -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill

Silent Trail

"And see not ye that bonny road,     Which winds about the fernie brae? That is the road to fair Elfland,     Where you and I this night maun gae. -Anonymous (c.1400-c.1600), Thomas the Rhymer

Up-Hill

Does the road wind uphill all the way?     Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day?     From morn to night, my friend. -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill