Moonlight Vapor (Zion)

the damp death     Quenched its caress upon his icy lips,         And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath     Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Empty Nest (Zion)

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale,     Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale     Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain     Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Suffering Ages (Bryce)

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land? To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More packt with danger to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song. The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Powers that made the world, A protest that is also prophecy. -Edwin Markham (1852-1940), The Man with the Hoe (1899)

Happy Boughs (Hawaii)

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 (Hawaii)

'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 (Hawaii)

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 (Hawaii)

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

Murmur in the Wind (Hawaii)

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

Dark Sails (Hawaii)

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

Longing (Hawaii)

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 (Hawaii)

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

Kindling the Universe (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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

Longing Heart (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

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 (Shenandoah)

"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 (Shenandoah)

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

Verdurous Gloom (Yosemite)

But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown     Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

Realm of Gold (Honolulu)

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 (Honolulu)

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