i love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser’s golden days,
Arcadian Sidney’s silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In...
When in my walks I meet some ruddy lad—
Or swarthy man—with tray-beladen head,
Whose smile entreats me, or his visage sad,
To buy the images he moulds for bread,
I think that,—though his poor Greek Slave in chains,
His Venus and her Boy with plaster dart,
Be, like the Organ-Grinder’s quavering strains,
But farthings in the...
If this little world to-night
Suddenly should fall through space
In a hissing, headlong flight,
Shrivelling from off its face,
As it falls into the sun,
In an instant every trace
Of the little crawling things—
Ants, philosophers, and lice,
Cattle, cockroaches, and kings,
Beggars, millionaires, and mice,
...
There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that ’s half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of...
From “The Isles of the Amazons,” Part III.
COME, lovers, come, forget your pains!
I know upon this earth a spot
Where clinking coins, that clank as chains
Upon the souls of men, are not;
Nor man is measured for his gains
Of gold that stream with crimson stains.
There snow-topped towers crush the clouds,
And break the still...
From “Myth and Romance”
THERE is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that ’s half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My...
From the Finnish by John Martin Crawford
From “The Kalevala” (Land of heroes), the National Epic of Finland
MASTERED 1 by desire impulsive,
By a mighty inward urging,
I am ready now for singing,
Ready to begin the chanting
Of our nation’s ancient folk-song,
Handed down from bygone ages.
In my mouth the words are melting,
...
