The grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set,...
Climbing the heights of Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer's girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth,...
Too oft we hide our Frailties' Blame Beneath some simple-sounding Name! So Folks, who in gilt Coaches ride, Will call Display but Proper Pride; So Spendthrifts, who their Acres lose,...
When, with bowed head, And silent-streaming tears, With mingled hopes and fears, To earth we yield our dead; The Saints, with clearer sight, Do cry in glad accord,-- "A soul released from prison...
I did but dream. I never knew What charms our sternest season wore. Was never yet the sky so blue, Was never earth so white before. Till now I never saw the glow Of sunset on yon hills of snow,...
A youth and maid upon a summer night Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light, Edmund and Emma, let their names be these, Among the shrubs within the circling trees,...
Edward and Jane a married couple were, And fonder she of him or he of her Was hard to say; their wedlock had begun When in one year they both were twenty-one;...
The merry clerks of Oxenford they stretch themselves at ease Unhelmeted on unbleached sward beneath unshrivelled trees. For the leaves, the leaves, are on the bough, the bark is on the bole,...
These two ballads must be considered together, as the last six verses (18-23) of The Clerk's Twa Sons, as here given, are a variant of The Wife of Usher's Well.
They sing of the grandeur of cliffs inland, But the cliffs of the ocean are truly grand; And I long to wander and dream and doubt Where the cliffs by the ocean run out and out. ...
When do the reasoning Powers decline? The Ancients said at Forty-Nine. At Forty-Nine behoves it then To quit the Inkhorn and the Pen, Since ARISTOTLE so decreed. Premising thus, we now proceed. ...
He stood alone on Fame's high mountain top, His hands at rest, his forehead bound with bay; And yet he watched with eyes unsatisfied The downward winding way.
I made an ascent of the Eiger Last year, which has ne'er been surpassed; 'Twas dangerous, long, and laborious, But almost incredibly fast. We started at twelve from the Faulberg;...
"What do you make so fair and bright?" "I make the cloak of Sorrow: O lovely to see in all men's sight Shall be the cloak of Sorrow, In all men's sight." "What do you build with sails for flight?"...
The Clock! a sinister, impassive god Whose threatening finger says to us: 'Remember! Soon in your anguished heart, as in a target, Quivering shafts of Grief will plant themselves; ...
A clock aeonian, steady and tall, With its back to creation's flaming wall, Stands at the foot of a dim, wide stair. Swing, swang, its pendulum goes, Swing--swang--here--there!...