Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For ’t is their nature to;
But, children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise;
Your little hands were never made
To tear each other’s eyes.
Let love through all your actions run,
And all your words be...
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and...
I Love, and have some cause to love, the earth,—
She is my Maker’s creature, therefore good;
She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse, she gives me food:
But what ’s a creature, Lord, compared with thee?
Or what ’s my mother or my nurse to me?
I love the air,—her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul,...
A Sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Inthralls the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A...
Are Friends Delight or Pain?
Could Bounty but remain
Riches were good —
But if they only stay
Ampler to fly away
Riches are sad.
Delight is as the flight —
Or in the Ratio of it,
As the Schools would say —
The Rainbow's way —
A Skein
Flung colored, after Rain,
Would suit as bright,
Except that flight
Were Aliment —
"If it would last"
I asked the East,
When that Bent...
Delight — becomes pictorial —
When viewed through Pain —
More fair — because impossible
Than any gain —
The Mountain — at a given distance —
In Amber — lies —
Approached — the Amber flits — a little —
And That's — the Skies —
Delight's Despair at setting
Is that Delight is less
Than the sufficing Longing
That so impoverish.
Enchantment's Perihelion
Mistaken oft has been
For the Authentic orbit
Of its Anterior Sun.
The last of Summer is Delight —
Deterred by Retrospect.
'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review —
Enchantment's Syndicate.
To meet it — nameless as it is —
Without celestial Mail —
Audacious as without a Knock
To walk within the Veil.
They ask but our Delight —
The Darlings of the Soil
And grant us all their Countenance
For a penurious smile.
