The single eye, the daughter of the light; Well pleased to recognise in lowliest shade Some glimmer of its parent beam, and made By daily draughts of brightness, inly bright....
Ay me! I love; give him your hand to kiss Who both your wooer and your poet is. Nature has precompos'd us both to love: Your part's to grant; my scene must be to move....
What do we see? Is Cato then become A greater name in Britain than in Rome? Does mankind now admire his virtues more, Though Lucan, Horace, Virgil, wrote before?...
Just when the gentle hand of spring Came fringing the trees with bud and leaf, And when the blades the warm suns bring Were given glad promise of golden sheaf; Just when the birds began to sing...
'Ah, friend! 'tis true--this truth you lovers know-- In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow, In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:...
Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long,...
My two-fold Book! single in show But double in Contents, Neat, but not curiously adorn'd Which in his early youth, A poet gave, no lofty one in truth...
The blast of common censure could I fear, Before your play my name should not appear; For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too, I pay the bribe I first received from you;...
To thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band, Condemn'd to labour in a barbarous land, Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays, And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise. ...
The bard, if e'er he feel at all, Must sure be quicken'd by a call Both on his heart and head, To pay with tuneful thanks the care And kindness of a lady fair, Who deigns to deck his bed.
Is not thy mind a gentle mind? Is not that heart a heart refined? Hast thou not every gentle grace, We love in woman's mind and face? And, oh! art thou a shrine for Sin To hold her hateful worship in?...
Maria, could Horace have guess'd What honour awaited his ode To his own little volume address'd, The honour which you have bestow'd; Who have traced it in characters here, So elegant, even, and neat,...
Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell, That strik'st a stillness into hell; Thou that tam'st tigers, and fierce storms, that rise, With thy soul-melting lullabies;...
Charms, that call down the moon from out her sphere, On this sick youth work your enchantments here! Bind up his senses with your numbers, so As to entrance his pain, or cure his woe....
Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days,...
Tom was goin' for a poet, an' said he'd a poet be; One of these long-haired fellers a feller hates to see; One of these chaps forever fixin' things cute and clever;...