To Roses in the Bosom of Castara |
William Habington |
1625 |
English |
Ye blushing virgins happy are
In the chaste nunnery of her breasts,
For he ’d profane so chaste a fair,
Who e’er should call them Cupid’s nests.
Transplanted thus how bright ye grow,
How rich a perfume do ye yield!
In some close garden cowslips... |
To Rosina Pico |
William Wilberforce |
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English |
Regent of song! who bringest to our shore
Strains from the passionate land, where shapes of art
Make music of the wind that passes o’er,
Thou even here hast found the human heart;
And in a thousand hearts thy songs repeat
Their echoes, like remembered... |
To Russia |
Joaquin Miller |
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English |
Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
What David bearded in her den
The Russian bear in ages when
You strode your black, unbridled stud,
A skin-clad savage of your steppes?
Why, one who now sits low and weeps,
Why, one who now wails out to you,—... |
To Sally |
John Quincy Adams |
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English |
The man in righteousness arrayed,
A pure and blameless liver,
Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
Nor venom-freighted quiver.
What though he wind his toilsome way
O’er regions wild and weary—
Through Zara’s burning desert stray,
Or... |
To Sea! |
Thomas Lovell Beddoes |
1823 |
English |
To sea! to sea! the calm is o’er,
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore,
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen mermaid’s pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep... |
To see her is a Picture — |
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English |
To see her is a Picture —
To hear her is a Tune —
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June —
To know her not — Affliction —
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the Sun
Were... |
To see the Summer Sky |
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To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie —
True Poems flee —
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To Seek a Friend |
William Cowper |
1751 |
English |
Extracts from “Friendship”
WHAT virtue, or what mental grace,
But men unqualified and base
Will boast it their possession?
Profusion apes the noble part
Of liberality of heart,
And dulness, of discretion.
If every polished gem we find... |
To Seneca Lake |
James Gates Percival |
1815 |
English |
On thy fair bosom, silver lake,
The wild swan spreads his snowy sail,
And round his breast the ripples break,
As down he bears before the gale.
On thy fair bosom, waveless stream,
The dipping paddle echoes far,
And flashes in the moonlight... |
To Shakespeare |
Richard Edwin Day |
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English |
Thou, who didst lay all other bosoms bare,
Impenetrable shade didst round thee throw;
And of the ready tears thou makest flow,
Monarch of tears, thou hast not any share.
Sad Petrarch, sadder Byron their despair
Unlocked, their dismal theatres of woe... |
To Shelley |
John Banister Tabb |
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English |
at shelley’s birth,
The Lark, dawn-spirit, with an anthem loud
Rose from the dusky earth
To tell it to the Cloud,
That, like a flower night-folded in the gloom,
Burst into morning bloom.
At Shelley’s death... |
To Sleep |
Frances Sargent Osgood |
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English |
Come to me, angel of the weary hearted!
Since they my loved ones, breathed upon by thee,
Unto thy realms unreal have departed,
I too may rest—even I: ah! haste to me.
I dare not bid thy darker, colder brother
With his more welcome offering appear,... |
To Sleep |
Maybury Fleming |
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English |
Sweet wooded way in life, forgetful Sleep!
Dim, drowsy realm where restful shadows fall,
And where the world’s glare enters not at all,
Or in soft glimmer making rest more deep;
Where sound comes not, or else like brooks that keep
The world’s noise out, as... |
To St - Mary Magdalen by Benjamin Dionysius Hill |
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English |
Mid the white spouses of the Sacred Heart,
After its queen, the nearest, dearest thou:
Yet the aureola around thy brow
Is not the virgins’—thine a throne apart.
Nor yet, my Saint, does faith-illumined art
Thy hand with palm of martyrdom endow:
And... |
To S——d (You all your youth observed the Golden Rule) |
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* * *
You all your Youth observed the Golden Rule
Till youre at last become the golden Fool
I sport with Fortune Merry Blithe & Gay
Like to the Lion Sporting with his Prey ...
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To tell the Beauty would decrease |
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English |
To tell the Beauty would decrease
To state the Spell demean —
There is a syllable-less Sea
Of which it is the sign —
My will endeavors for its word
And fails, but entertains
A Rapture as of Legacies —... |
To Thackeray |
Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton |
1829 |
English |
O Gentler Censor of our age!
Prime master of our ampler tongue!
Whose word of wit and generous page
Were never wroth except with Wrong.
Fielding—without the manner’s dross,
Scott—with a spirit’s larger room,
What Prelate deems thy grave his loss... |
To Thaliarchus |
Horace |
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English |
From the Latin by Sir Stephen Edward de Vere
A SPECTRAL form Soracte stands, snow-crowned,
His shrouded pines beneath their burden bending;
Not now, his rifts descending,
Leap the wild streams, in icy fetters bound.
Heap high the logs! Pour... |
To the Boy |
Elizabeth Clementine Kinney |
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English |
Thou happiest thing alive,
Anomaly of earth!
If sound thy lineage give,
Thou art the natural birth
Of affluent Joy—
Thy mother’s name was Mirth,
Thou little singing boy!
Thy star—it was a sun!
Thy time the month of... |
To the bright east she flies, |
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To the bright east she flies,
Brothers of Paradise
Remit her home,
Without a change of wings,
Or Love's convenient things,
Enticed to come.
Fashioning what she is,
Fathoming what she was... |