Works

Not to the object specially designed,
Howe'er momentous in itself it be,
Good to promote or curb depravity,
Is the wise Legislator's view confined.
His Spirit, when most severe, is oft most kind;...

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver...

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
My lyre whereof I make my melody.
I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
My lyre whereof I make my melody.
I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
...

Not in sunk Spain's prolong'd death agony;
Not in rich England, bent but to make pour
The flood of the world's commerce on her shore;
Not in that madhouse, France, from whence the cry...

O nightingale that on yon blooming spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hopes the Lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May....

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,...

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,...

While with false pride, and narrow jealousy,
Numbers reject each new expression, won,
Perchance, from language richer than our own,
O! with glad welcome may the POET see...

Ceas'd is the rain; but heavy drops yet fall
From the drench'd roof; - yet murmurs the sunk wind
Round the dim hills; can yet a passage find
Whistling thro' yon cleft rock, and ruin'd wall....

The evening shines in May's luxuriant pride,
And all the sunny hills at distance glow,
And all the brooks, that thro' the valley flow,
Seem liquid gold. - O! had my fate denied...

Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
And it seemed to me that life
Had come to its much desired end -
Just then God gave me a wife.

I had seen the beauty of fairy things,...

Let brutish hearts, as hard as stones,
Mock The weak Muse's tender moans,
As now she wails o'er Titty's bones
With anguish deep;
Doubtless o'er parent's dying groans
They'd little weep.
...

1.

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

2.

For the sword outwears its sheath,...

Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.

Profoundly still the twilight air,...

The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,...

The prim daisy's golden eye
On the fallow land doth lie,
Though the Spring is just begun:
Pewits watch it all the day,
And the skylark's nest of hay
Is there by its dried leaves in the sun.
...