A Simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad...
At Inversnaid, upon Loch Lomond
SWEET Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head;
And these gray rocks, this household lawn,
These trees,—a veil just half withdrawn,—
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake,
This...
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and...
“with sacrifice, before the rising morn,
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from th’ infernal gods, ’mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered lord have I required;
Celestial pity I again implore;
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!”
So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the suppliant...
STERN daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove—
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free,
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!
There are who ask...
I.
there was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,—
The glory and the freshness of the dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now...
THE Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
Like an army defeated...
I Wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,—
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along...
O Blithe new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
A cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.
Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou...
Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring warbler...
