Works

O daughter of our Southern sun,
Sweet sister of each flower,
Dost dream in terraced Avalon
A shadow-haunted hour?
Or stand with Guinevere upon
Some ivied Camelot tower?
...

Inmate of a mountain-dwelling,
Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed
From the watch-towers of Helvellyn;
Awed, delighted, and amazed!

Potent was the spell that bound thee
Not unwilling to obey;...

Put off the vestal Veil, nor, oh!
Let weeping angels View it;
Your cheeks belie its virgin snow.
And blush repenting through it.

Put off the fatal zone you wear;
The shining pearls around it...

Lily of Streams lay by my side last night
And to my prayers gave answers of delight;
Day came before our fairy-tale was finished,
Because the tale was long, not short the night.
...

Dear Perenna, prithee come
And with smallage dress my tomb:
Add a cypress sprig thereto,
With a tear, and so Adieu.

Live, live with me, and thou shalt see
The pleasures I'll prepare for thee:
What sweets the country can afford
Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board.
The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed,...

O! fair, sweet Phyllis and sweet, fair May,
Which of you carried my heart away?
Who has my heart? I would like to know
Which was the guilty one of the two,
But I only know it was filched one day...

JOHN courts Perrette; but all in vain;
Love's sweetest oaths, and tears, and sighs
All potent spells her heart to gain
The ardent lover vainly tries:
Fruitless his arts to make her waver,...

Madam, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,...

The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my glass, and I listened
With love to his odorous music,
His flushed and magnificent song.

- 'I am health, I am heart, I am life!
For I give for the asking...

[Original Poem]

Morgens und abends zu lesen
Der, den ich liebe
Hat mir gesagt
Da' er mich braucht.

Darum
Gebe ich auf mich acht
Sehe auf meinen Weg und...

A child,
Curious and innocent,
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
Loses himself in the Fair.

Thro' the jostle and din
Wandering, he revels,
Dreaming, desiring, possessing;...

It lies before me there, and my own breath
Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside
The living head I stood in honoured pride,
Talking of lovely things that conquer death....

I call no goddess to inspire my strains,
A fabled muse may suit a bard that feigns;
Friend of my life! my ardent spirit burns,
And all the tribute of my heart returns,
For boons accorded, goodness ever new,...

My wooing's ended: now my wedding's near
When gloves are giving, gilded be you there.

Olor Iscanus queries: 'Why should we
Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?'
So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn
Of England's civil strife, did careless Vaughan...

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,...

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,...

There has been many a grander deed since man had life to give,
And thousands have gone to certain death, eyes open, that men might live;...

I will not striue m' inuention to inforce,
With needlesse words your eyes to entertaine,
T' obserue the formall ordinarie course
That euerie one so vulgarly doth faine:...