Portentous change when History can appear As the cool Advocate of foul device; Reckless audacity extol, and jeer At consciences perplexed with scruples nice! They who bewail not, must abhor, the sneer...
Who ponders National events shall find An awful balancing of loss and gain, Joy based on sorrow, good with ill combined, And proud deliverance issuing out of pain...
Lo! where she stands fixed in a saint-like trance, One upward hand, as if she needed rest From rapture, lying softly on her breast! Nor wants her eyeball an ethereal glance;...
Men of the Western World! in Fate's dark book Whence these opprobrious leaves of dire portent? Think ye your British Ancestors forsook Their native Land, for outrage provident;...
Stretched on the dying Mother's lap, lies dead Her new-born Babe; dire ending of bright hope! But Sculpture here, with the divinest scope Of luminous faith, heavenward hath raised that head...
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground, if path be there or none, While a fair region round the traveler lies Which he forbears again to look upon;...
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground, if path be there or none, While a fair region round the traveler lies Which he forbears again to look upon;...
From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail; A musical but melancholy chime, Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,...
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man;...
Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood; And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear, The coast of France, the coast of France how near! Drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood....
Not in the lucid intervals of life That come but as a curse to party-strife; Not in some hour when Pleasure with a sigh Of languor puts his rosy garland by; Not in the breathing-times of that poor slave...
Not Love, not War, nor the tumultuous swell, Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change, Nor Duty struggling with afflictions strange Not these 'alone' inspire the tuneful shell;...
How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright The effluence from yon distant mountain's head, Which, strewn with snow smooth as the sky can shed, Shines like another sun, on mortal sight...
Another year! another deadly blow! Another mighty Empire overthrown! And We are left, or shall be left, alone; The last that dare to struggle with the Foe. 'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know...
Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright, Our aged Sovereign sits, to the ebb and flow Of states and kingdoms, to their joy or woe, Insensible. He sits deprived of sight,...
Even so for me a Vision sanctified The sway of Death; long ere mine eyes had seen Thy countenance, the still rapture of thy mien When thou, dear Sister! wert become Death's Bride:...
The floods are roused, and will not soon be weary; Down from the Pennine Alps how fiercely sweeps Croglin, the stately Eden's tributary! He raves, or through some moody passage creeps...
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,...
The cattle crowding round this beverage clear To slake their thirst, with reckless hoofs have trod The encircling turf into a barren clod; Through which the waters creep, then disappear,...