The Odor of a rose: light of a star:
The essence of a flame blown on by wind,
That lights and warms all near it, bland and kind,
But aye consumes itself, as though at war
With what supports and feeds it;—from afar
It draws its life, but evermore inclined
To leap into the flame that makes men blind
Who seek the secret of all things that...
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Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at—
My starting moves your laughter!I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a... -
From “The Course of Time,” Book IV.
HE touched his harp, and nations heard entranced,
As some vast river of unfailing source,
Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,
And openèd new fountains in the human heart.
Where Fancy halted, weary in her flight,
In other men, his fresh as morning rose,
And soared untrodden heights, and seemed... -
Take back into thy bosom, earth,
This joyous, May-eyed morrow,
The gentlest child that ever mirth
Gave to be reared by sorrow!
’T is hard—while rays half green, half gold,
Through vernal bowers are burning,
And streams their diamond mirrors hold
To Summer’s face returning—
To say we’re thankful that his sleep
... -
A Poet’s Epitaph
STOP, mortal! Here thy brother lies,—
The poet of the poor.
His books were rivers, woods, and skies,
The meadow and the moor;
His teachers were the torn heart’s wail,
The tyrant, and the slave,
The street, the factory, the jail,
The palace,—and the grave!
Sin met thy brother... -
On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom
NO more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.Wild...
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Great spirits now on earth are sojourning:
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:
And lo! whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael’s... -
By B. R. Haydon
WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud
Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind,
Then break against the rock, and show behind
The lowland valleys floating up to crowd
The sense with beauty. He, with forehead bowed
And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
And very meek with... -
JUST 1 for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed;
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple,... -
April, 1860
goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb—
We stand to-day by Wordsworth’s tomb.When Byron’s eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like...