Answer to a Sonnet Ending Thus—
“Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that made the hyacinthine bell.”
By T. H. Reynolds.
BLUE! ’T is the life of heaven,—the domain
Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,—
The tent of...
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Saint Agnes’ EVE,—ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the beadsman’s fingers while he told
His rosary, and while his...
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Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human...
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[Written in the spring of 1819, when suffering from physical depression, the precursor of his death, which happened soon after]
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains...
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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun!
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run—
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with...
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The Poetry of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the grasshopper’s,—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done...
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From “Endymion,” Book I.
A THING of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on...
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Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;...
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Great spirits now on earth are sojourning:
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:...
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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 haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of...
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