Our eyeless bark sails free,
Though with boom and spar
Andes, Alp, or Himmalee
Strikes never moon or star.
-
-
My highway is unfeatured air,
My consorts are the sleepless Stars,
And men my giant arms upbear,—
My arms unstained and free from scars.I rest forever on my way,
Rolling around the happy Sun;
My children love the sunny day,
But noon and night to me are one.My heart has pulses like their own,
I am their Mother, and my... -
O earth! art thou not weary of thy graves?
Dear, patient mother Earth, upon thy breast
How are they heaped from farthest east to west!
From the dim north, where the wild storm-wind raves
O’er the cold surge that chills the shore it laves,
To sunlit isles by softest seas caressed,
Where roses bloom alway and song-birds nest,
How thick they... -
Oh, be not ether-borne, poet of earth;
Stretch not thy wings to such a cloudless height
As ne’er to know the darkness of the night,
As ne’er to feel the touch of grief or mirth
That lives in human sympathy, whose birth
Is longed for in this world of love and blight;
Thou, too, must drink of sorrow and delight,
Must taste the joy of hope,... -
From the German by Lord Bulwer-Lytton
“TAKE the world,” cried the God from his heaven
To men—“I proclaim you its heirs;
To divide it amongst you ’t is given:
You have only to settle the shares.”Each takes for himself as it pleases,
Old and young have alike their desire:
The harvest the husbandman seizes;
Through the wood... -
From “Alastor”; Preface
“Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.”—Confessions of Saint Augustine.EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With... -
As from the earth the light Balloon
Asks nothing but release —
Ascension that for which it was,
Its soaring Residence.
The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of its song. -
Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone. -
Delia, th' unkindest girl on earth,
When I besought the fair,
That favour of intrinsic worth,
A ringlet of her hair, -
Refus'd that instant to comply
With my absurd request,
For reasons she could specify,
Some twenty score at least.
Trust me, my dear,...Oh Sun! oh glorious Sun!
The spell of winter binds me strong and dread
In the dark sleep, the coldness of the dead;
And song and beauty from thy haunts are gone.
The skies above me lower,
The frozen tempests beat upon my breast,
...