From “The Faërie Queene,” Book II. Canto XII.
THERE the most daintie paradise on ground
Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
And none does others happinesse envye;
The painted flowres; the trees upshooting hye;
The dales for shade; the hilles for breathing space;
The trembling groves...
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From “The Faërie Queene,” Book I. Canto I.
HE, making speedy way through spersèd ayre,
And through the world of waters wide and deepe,
To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire,
Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe,
And low, where dawning day doth never peepe,
His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and... -
From Canto I.
The castle hight of Indolence,
And its false luxury;
Where for a little time, alas!
We lived right jollily.O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it... -
I Leave behind me the elm-shadowed square
And carven portals of the silent street,
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.
At the lane’s ending lie the white-winged fleet.
O restless Fancy,... -
Part I.
on either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky,
And through the field the roads run by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below—
The island of Shalott.Willows...
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The Skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted... -
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’T is some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”Ah,...
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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 1
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens, bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;... -
In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This—all... -
From the German by James Clarence Mangan
HARK! the faint bells of the sunken city
Peal once more their wonted evening chime!
From the deep abysses floats a ditty,
Wild and wondrous, of the olden time.Temples, towers, and domes of many stories
There lie buried in an ocean grave,—
Undescried, save when their golden glories...