Works

Mellow hazes, lowly trailing
Over wood and meadow, veiling
Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing
Sailor-like to foreign lands;
And the north-wind overleaping
Summer's brink, and floodlike sweeping...

I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue -
The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,
The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird's wing;...

[C. K. loquitur.]



I dreamed I was in fair Niphon.
Amid tea-fields I journeyed on,
Reclined in my jinrikishaw;
Across the rolling plains I saw
The lordly Fusi-yama rise,...

I Dreamed that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,...

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
'The Legend of Good Women,' long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath...

--risum tenaetis, amici


"The longer one lives, the more one learns,"
Said I, as off to sleep I went,
Bemused with thinking of Tithe concerns,
And reading a book by the Bishop of FERNS,[1]...

The exhaustion of prison is taking its toll.
All the days and the nights arc anguish.
Every hope, every passion that stirred my soul
My confinement strives to extinguish....

When I was young long, long ago
I dreamed myself among the flowers;
And fancy drew the picture so,
They seemed like Fairies in their bowers.

The rose was still a rose, you know...

Lying listless in the mosses
Underneath a tree that tosses
Flakes of sunshine, and embosses
Its green shadow with the snow -
Drowsy-eyed, I sink in slumber
Born of fancies without number -...

The world is asleep! All hushed is Nature's warm, sweet breath.
The world is asleep, and dreaming the silent dream of snow,
But through the silence that seems like the silence of death,...

Bland as the morning breath of June
The southwest breezes play;
And, through its haze, the winter noon
Seems warm as summer's day.
The snow-plumed Angel of the North
Has dropped his icy spear;...

I'm weary of this weather and I hanker for the ways
Which people read of in the psalms and preachers paraphrase--
The grassy fields, the leafy woods, the banks where I can lie...

Bring me a quart of colonial beer
And some doughy damper to make good cheer,
I must make a heavy dinner;
Heavily dine and heavily sup,
Of indigestible things fill up,...

BY SIR W. CURTIS.

1826.


'Twas evening time, in the twilight sweet
I sailed along, when--whom should I meet
But a Turtle journeying o'er the sea,
"On the service of his Majesty."[1]...

A child was born in sin and shame,
Wronged by his very birth,
Without a home, without a name,
One over in the earth.

No wifely triumph he inspired,
Allayed no husband's fear;...

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me?
I was but made fancy
By some necromancy
That much of my life claims the spot as its key.

Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West,...

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,...

"It shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine."
Micah iii. 6.

I asked the Lord: "Sire, is this true
Which hosts of theologians hold,
That when we creatures censure you...

With moon-white hearts that held a gleam
I gathered wild-flowers in a dream,
And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood
Was odour of the wildwood bud.

From dew, the starlight arrowed through,...

I dreamed of a song--I heard it sung;
In the ear of my soul its strange notes rung.
What were its words I could not tell,
Only the voice I heard right well,
For its tones unearthly my spirit bound...