From “Astrophel and Stella”
LOVING in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain...
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He sang one song and died—no more but that:
A single song and carelessly complete.
He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,
Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,
To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,
Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.
A few slow beads, blood-red and honey-sweet,
Oozed from the grape,... -
What is a sonnet? ’T is the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? ’T is the tear that fell
From a great poet’s hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song,—ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was... -
O’er the wet sands an insect crept
Ages ere man on earth was known—
And patient Time, while Nature slept,
The slender tracing turned to stone.’T was the first autograph: and ours?
Prithee, how much of prose or song,
In league with the creative powers,
Shall ’scape Oblivion’s broom so long? -
I.
art’s use; what is it but to touch the springs
Of nature? But to hold a torch up for
Humanity in Life’s large corridor,
To guide the feet of peasants and of kings!
What is it but to carry union through
Thoughts alien to thoughts kindred, and to merge
The lines of color that should not diverge,
And give the sun a window to shine... -
“A note
All out of tune in this world’s instrument.”
—AMY LEVY.I KNOW not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes
Illumed with such strange gleams of... -
A Song of Derivations
I COME from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
Awoke my breath i’ the young world’s air.
I... -
[Published in a volume by several authors for the benefit of the starving weavers of Lancashire during the American civil war.]
THE WORLD! Was jester ever in
A viler than the present?
Yet if it ugly be—as sin,
It almost is—as pleasant!
It is a merry world (pro tem.);
And some are gay, and therefore
It pleases them—but some... -
How many verses have I thrown
Into the fire because the one
Peculiar word, the wanted most,
Was irrecoverably lost! -
From “Susan: A Poem of Degrees”
HER Master gave the signal, with a look:
Then, timidly as if afraid, she took
In her rough hands the Laureate’s dainty book,
And straight began. But when she did begin,
Her own mute sense of poesy within
Broke forth to hail the poet, and to greet
His graceful fancies and the accents sweet
In which...