Voiceless Fountain

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,         And feeds her grief with his rememberd lay;     And will no more reply to winds or fountains,         Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,         Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Silent Leap

Than Oars divide the Ocean,-- Too silver for a seam-- Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon Leap, plashless as they swim. -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), A Bird came down the Walk

Fleeting Hope

Till I scarecely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before-- One the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Raven

Fainting Soul

O love, they die in you rich sky,     They faint on hill or field or river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul,     And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), The Splendor Falls

Weeping Cloud

But when the melancholy fit shall fall     Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,     And hides the green hill in an April shroud; -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on Melancholy

Idle Tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Tears, Idle Tears

Murmur

Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear         Than those for whose disdain she pined away     Into a shadow of all sounds:--a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Beauty and the Beast

Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. -William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), Sailing to Byzantium

Distant Maiden

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!-- By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."         Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Raven

Pensive Stream

And leaning backward in a pensive dream,     And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers     Plucked in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. -Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), The Scholar-Gipsy

Leaf-Fringed Legend

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,     Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express     A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend hanunts about thy shape     Of deities or mortals, or of both,         In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?     What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?         What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn

Fire-Lit Face

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! Ah, brother! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now,-- The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Second Coming

The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), The Second Coming

Slant of Light

When it comes, the Landscape listens-- Shadows--hold their breath-- When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death-- -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), There's a certain Slant of light

Shrine of Melancholy

She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;     And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,     Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight     Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,         Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue     Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,     And be among her cloudy trophies hung. -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on Melancholy

Moonlight Vapor

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

Starry Night

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,     Star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out, Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand--     Come, long-sought! -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), To Night

Falling Stars

Go and catch a falling star -John Donne (1572-1631), Go and Catch a Falling Star

Ghosts and Shadows

By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summon'd am to a tourney Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end: Methinks it is no journey. -Anonymous (c.1400 - c.1600), Tom o' Bedlam's Song

Hope

Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees! Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,     The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death,     And Love can never lose its own! -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Caress

Helen, thy beauty is to me     Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,     That weary, way-worn wanderer bore     To his own native shore. -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), To Helen

Dark Valley

And travellers, now, within that valley,     Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically     To a discordant melody; While, like a ghastly rapid river,     Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever,     And laugh--but smile no more. -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Haunted Palace

Beauty and the Beast

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;       Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?       Thy waters wasted them while they were free,       And many a tyrant since; their shores obey       The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay       Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;       Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,       Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. -George Gordon Noel Byron 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824), The Ocean

Pulsating Heart

And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Leda and the Swan

Summer Dreams

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

Mysterious Path

We tread the paths their feet have worn,     We sit beneath their orchard trees,     We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn; We turn the pages that they read,     Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made,     No step is on the conscious floor! -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl

Dissolving Memory

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget     What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to a Nightingale

Eternal Note

Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. -Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Dover Beach

Quiet Waves

Here life has death for neighbour,     And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour,     Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither,     And no such things grow here. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), The Garden of Proserpine

Days End

Break, break, break,     At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead     Will never come back to me. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Break, Break, Break

Evening Bed

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?     Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek?     Yea, beds for all who come. -Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill

Night Wind

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. -Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Dover Beach

Lead Kindly Light

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom; Lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. -John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801 - 1890), The Pillar of Cloud (1833). Lead Kindly Light

Soul Searching

The Soul selects her own Society-- Then--shuts the Door-- To her divine Majority-- Present no more-- Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing-- At her low Gate-- Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat-- I've known her--from an ample nation-- Choose One-- Then--close the Valves of her attention-- Like Stone-- -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), The Soul selects her own Society

Light and Gloom

And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), A Prayer for My Daughter

Hope and Despair

My life closed twice before its close-- It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), My life closed twice before its close

Sleepy World

Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. -Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), The Garden of Proserpine

Mysterious Light

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons-- That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes-- -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), There's a certain Slant of light

Forbidden Hopes

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:     Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,                 A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,     No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,                 For all our art. -Robert Bridges (1844-1930), Nightingales

Dream Tears

"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead!     See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,     Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some dream has loosened from his brain." -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Weeping Rock

Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw     The wreath upon him, like an anadem     Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Faint Words

The water hears thy faintest word, And blushes into wine. -John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811 - 1875), Mysterious Is Thy Presence, Lord

Glittering Sail

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Tears, Idle Tears

Noonday Dew

And a light spear topped with a cypress-cone,     Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew     Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart     Shook the weak hand that grasped it. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Blind with Tears

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam         Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,--         Came in slow pomp;--the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Twinkle

Hear the sledges with the bells--                     Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells!         How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,                 In the icy air of night!         While the stars that oversprinkle         All the heavens, seem to twinkle                 With a crystalline delight;             Keeping time, time, time,             In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells     From the bells, bells, bells, bells,                 Bells, bells, bells,--     From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Bells

Sunshine Rain

Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;     Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;     Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray;     Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. -John Keats (1795-1821), The Eve of St. Agnes

Veils of Morning

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Light and Shadow

Far or forgot to me is near;     Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanish'd gods to me appear;     And one to me are shame and fame. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Brahma

A Stir in the Air

But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave--there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide-- As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow-- The hours are breathing faint and low-- And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence. -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The City in the Sea

Evening Sail

It is time to be old, To take in sail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), Terminus

Shadowy Twin

Well: while was fashioning         This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything         Prepared a sinister mate         For her--so gaily great-- A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.         And as the smart ship grew         In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.         Alien they seemed to be:         No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history,         Or sign that they were bent         By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, -Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), The Convergence of the Twain

Sapphire Heaven

Beyond a mortal man impassioned far     At these voluptuous accents, he arose,     Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star     Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose     Into her dream he melted, as the rose     Blendeth its odor with the violet--     Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows     Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet Against the windowpanes; St. Agnes' moon hath set. -John Keats (1795-1821), The Eve of St. Agnes

Phantom Ship

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Paul Revere's Ride

Last Lights

And for all this, nature is never spent;     There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- -Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), God's Grandeur

Empty Nest

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

Lost Echo

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,         And feeds her grief with his rememberd lay; -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais

Nocturnal Secret

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men     We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,                 As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,     Dream, while the innumerable choir of day                 Welcome the dawn. -Robert Bridges (1844-1930), Nightingales

Tempestuous Day

from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), England in 1819

Eternity

If the red slayer think he slays,     Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways     I keep, and pass, and turn again. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Brahma

Desolate Passion

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,     Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. -Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae