From the Spanish by Edward Fitzgerald
From “Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made of”
AND yet—and yet—in these our ghostly lives,
Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,
How if our waking life, like that of sleep,
Be all a dream in that eternal life
To which we wake not till we sleep in death?
How if, I say, the senses we now trust...
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!
Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music’...
From “The Davideis”
AWAKE, awake, my Lyre!
And tell thy silent master’s humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;
Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she,
And I so lowly be,
Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
Hark! how the strings awake:
And, though the moving hand approach not near,...
An Ode
’T WAS at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip’s warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais,...
From the French by Elizur Wright
A COBBLER sang from morn till night:
’T was sweet and marvellous to hear;
His trills and quavers told the ear
Of more contentment and delight,
Enjoyed by that laborious wight,
Than e’er enjoyed the sages seven,
Or any mortals short of heaven.
His neighbor, on the other hand,
With gold in...
This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honor I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better than ill known:
Rumor can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would have, but when ’t depends
Not on the number, but the choice, of friends.
Books should, not...
He that is down need fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.
Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage;
Here little, and...
Beat on, proud billows; Boreas, blow;
Swell, curlèd waves, high as Jove’s roof;
Your incivility doth show
That innocence is tempest proof;
Though surly Nereus frown, my thoughts are calm;
Then strike, Affliction, for thy wounds are balm.
That which the world miscalls a jail
A private closet is to me;
Whilst a good...
Playing Blind-Man’s-Buff
YOU charm when you talk, walk, or move,
Still more on this day than another:
When blinded—you ’re taken for Love;
When the bandage is off—for his mother!
From “An Elegy on a Friend’s Passion for His Astrophill”
WITHIN these woods of Arcadia
He chiefe delight and pleasure tooke,
And on the mountaine Parthenie,
Upon the chrystall liquid brooke,
The Muses met him ev’ry day,
That taught him sing, to write, and say.
When he descended downe the mount,
His personage seemed most...
