And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve...
From “Youth and Age”
VERSE, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young?—Ah, woful when!
Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This...
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my making dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the...
We pledged our hearts, my love and I,—
I in my arms the maiden clasping;
I could not tell the reason why,
But, O, I trembled like an aspen!
Her father’s love she bade me gain;
I went, and shook like any reed!
I strove to act the man,—in vain!
We had exchanged our hearts indeed.
How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits.
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
For shame, dear Friend; renounce this canting strain!
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain?
Place—titles—...
Which Died before Baptism
“BE, rather than be called, a child of God,”
Death whispered!—with assenting nod,
Its head upon its mother’s breast,
The baby bowed, without demur—
Of the kingdom of the Blest
Possessor, not inheritor.
From the First Part of “Wallenstein,” Act III. Sc. 4.
WALLENSTEIN (in soliloquy). Is it possible?
Is ’t so? I can no longer what I would!
No longer draw back at my liking! I
Must do the deed, because I thought of it,
And fed this heart here with a dream! Because
I did not scowl temptation from my presence,
Dallied with thought of...
O, It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend’s fancy; or, with head bent low,
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold,
’Twixt crimson banks; and then a...
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;...
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?—
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch-tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone,—and the birch in...
