To the Idol of My Eye and Delight of My Heart, Anne Hathaway 1
WOULD ye be taught, ye feathered throng,
With love’s sweet notes to grace your song,
To pierce the heart with thrilling lay,
Listen to mine Anne Hathaway!
She hath a way to sing so clear,
Phœbus might wondering stop to hear.
To melt the sad, make blithe the gay,
And...
[Lord Bolingbroke]
From “An Essay on Man,” Epistle IV.
COME then, my friend! my genius! come along;
O master of the poet, and the song!
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy...
Is there a whim-inspirèd fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate 1 to seek, owre proud to snool; 2
Let him draw near,
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.
Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowd among,
That weekly this area throng;
O,...
I.
a Dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow...
On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind’s steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock...
Died February 16, 1857
ALOFT upon an old basaltic crag,
Which, scalped by keen winds that defend the Pole,
Gazes with dead face on the seas that roll
Around the secret of the mystic zone,
A mighty nation’s star-bespangled flag
Flutters alone,
And underneath, upon the lifeless front
Of that drear cliff, a simple name...
From “Paradise Lost,” Book IV.
TWO of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honor clad
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all:
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence...
From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 7.
ALL the world ’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His Acts being seven ages. At first the Infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining School-boy, with his...
From “Antony and Cleopatra,” Act II. Sc. 2.
ENOBARBUS.—The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,...
From “Queen Mab,” I.
HOW wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When, throned on ocean’s wave,
It blushes o’er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!
Hath then the gloomy Power...
