And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee Has been my heart - and thy dead memory Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year, Unchangingly preserved and buried there.
The viewless and invisible Consequence Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in, And...hovers o'er thy guilty sleep, Unveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts More ghastly than those deeds -
Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee; For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below The rotting bones of dead antiquity.
My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, The verse that would invest them melts away Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day: How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,...
For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast With feelings which make rapture pain resemble, Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,...
As the sunrise to the night, As the north wind to the clouds, As the earthquake's fiery flight, Ruining mountain solitudes, Everlasting Italy, Be those hopes and fears on thee.
Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues Clothest this naked world; and over Sea And Earth and air, and all the shapes that be In peopled darkness of this wondrous world...
Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven, To whom alone it has been given To change and be adored for ever, Envy not this dim world, for never But once within its shadow grew One fair as -
People of England, ye who toil and groan, Who reap the harvests which are not your own, Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear, And for your own take the inclement air; Who build warm houses......
Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun, To rise upon our darkness, if the star Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war With thy young brightness!
Wake the serpent not - lest he Should not know the way to go, - Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping Through the deep grass of the meadow! Not a bee shall hear him creeping, Not a may-fly shall awaken...
I am as a spirit who has dwelt Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known The inmost converse of his soul, the tone...
What men gain fairly - that they should possess, And children may inherit idleness, From him who earns it - This is understood; Private injustice may be general good....
1. When a lover clasps his fairest, Then be our dread sport the rarest. Their caresses were like the chaff In the tempest, and be our laugh His despair - her epitaph!
When soft winds and sunny skies With the green earth harmonize, And the young and dewy dawn, Bold as an unhunted fawn, Up the windless heaven is gone, - Laugh - for ambushed in the day, -...
I am drunk with the honey wine Of the moon-unfolded eglantine, Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls. The bats, the dormice, and the moles Sleep in the walls or under the sward...
Ye gentle visitations of calm thought - Moods like the memories of happier earth, Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth, Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought, -...