These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness sensations sweet,
Felt in the Blood, and felt among the heart.

-William Wordsworth,
Lines Composed a Few Miles
above Tintern Abbey
, 1798





Beauty Is Truth

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth Eternity: Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode on a Grecian Urn





Verdurous Gloom

        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





Summer Retreat

        Or in my boat I lie
Moored to the cool bank in the summer-heats,
    'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,
    And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills,
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

-Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),
The Scholar-Gipsy





Winter Grief

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
    But grief returns with the revolving year.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





North Wind

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
The Snow-Storm





Silver Shrine

    Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest
    After so many hours of toil and quest,
    A famished pilgrim--saved by miracle.
    Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest
    Saving of thy sweet self; if thouh think'st well
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

-John Keats (1795-1821),
The Eve of St. Agnes





Mind's Work

And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
The Snow-Storm







previous Yosemite pictures




images © 2000 by Randy Wang
up | home | me | donate | email