’MID white Sierras, that slope to the sea,
Lie turbulent lands. Go dwell in the skies,
And the thundering tongues of Yosemitè
Shall persuade you to silence, and you shall be wise.
I but sing for the love of song and the few
Who loved me first and shall love me last;
And the storm shall pass as the storms have passed,
For never were...
From “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto III.
SKY, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,—if I rest.
But where of...
In these restrained and careful times
Our knowledge petrifies our rhymes;
Ah! for that reckless fire men had
When it was witty to be mad,
When wild conceits were piled in scores,
And lit by flaring metaphors,
When all was crazed and out of tune,—
Yet throbbed with music of the moon.
If we could dare to write as ill
As...
The Monument outlasting bronze
Was promised well by bards of old;
The lucid outline of their lay
Its sweet precision keeps for aye,
Fixed in the ductile language-gold.
But we who work with smaller skill,
And less refined material mould,—
This close conglomerate English speech,
Bequest of many tribes, that each
...
I Wrought them like a targe of hammered gold
On which all Troy is battling round and round;
Or Circe’s cup, embossed with snakes that wound
Through buds and myrtles, fold on scaly fold;
Or like gold coins, which Lydian tombs may hold
Stamped with winged racers, in the old red ground;
Or twined gold armlets from the funeral mound
Of some...
More than the soul of ancient song is given
To thee, O poet of to-day!—thy dower
Comes, from a higher than Olympian heaven,
In holier beauty and in larger power.
To thee Humanity, her woes revealing,
Would all her griefs and ancient wrongs rehearse;
Would make thy song the voice of her appealing,
And sob her mighty sorrows...
From “The Excursion,” Book I.
O, MANY are the poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse
(Which, in the docile season of their youth,
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a...
When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,—
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey! for...
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;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:...
Prefacing the Butcher-Lang Translation
AS one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan Isle forgets the Main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt...
