There ’s a city that lies in the Kingdom of Clouds,
In the glorious country on high,
Which an azure and silvery curtain enshrouds,
To screen it from mortal eye;
A city of temples and turrets of gold,
That gleam by a sapphire sea,
Like jewels more splendid than earth may behold,
Or are dreamed of by you and by me.
And...
It flows through old, hushed Ægypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
...
I Met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that...
Dim dawn behind the tamarisks—the sky is saffron-yellow—
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway!
Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth!...
From “The Bride of Abydos”
KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, and beams ever shine;
Where the light wings...
From “The Light of the Harem”
WHO has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave,
Its temples, and grottoes, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?
O, to see it at sunset,—when warm o’er the lake
Its splendor at parting a summer eve throws,
Like a bride,...
In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet’s rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangor...
To His Sister
“Childe Harold,” Canto III.
THE CASTLED crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far...
Described in “Rhymes for the Nursery”
“HOW does the water
Come down at Lodore!”
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,...
Taddeo Gaddi built me. I am old,
Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
Upon the Arno, as Saint Michael’s own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles, I behold
Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
My kindred and companions. Me alone
It moveth not, but is by me controlled.
I can...
