Give me your patience, sister, while I frame Exact in capitals your golden name; Or sue the fair Apollo and he will Rouse from his heavy slumber and instill Great love in me for thee and Poesy....
Ah! ken ye what I met the day Out oure the Mountains A coming down by craggi[e]s grey An mossie fountains A[h] goud hair'd Marie yeve I pray Ane minute's guessing For that I met upon the way...
'Tis the witching hour of night, Orbed is the moon and bright, And the stars they glisten, glisten, Seeming with bright eyes to listen, For what listen they? For a song and for a charm,...
Full many a dreary hour have I past, My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught...
Give me women, wine, and snuff Until I cry out "hold, enough!" You may do so sans objection Till the day of resurrection; For bless my beard they aye shall be My beloved Trinity.
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:...
As from the darkening gloom a silver dove Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light, On pinions that nought moves but pure delight, So fled thy soul into the realms above,...
Many the wonders I this day have seen: The sun, when first he kissed away the tears That filled the eyes of Morn; the laurelled peers Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;...
How many bards gild the lapses of time! A few of them have ever been the food Of my delighted fancy, I could brood Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime: And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,...
Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there Among the bushes half leafless, and dry; The stars look very cold about the sky, And I have many miles on foot to fare....
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang'rous waist!...
Brother belov'd if health shall smile again, Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek: If e'er returning vigour bid these weak And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,...
Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance! In what diviner moments of the day Art thou most lovely? when gone far astray Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance, Or when serenely wandering in a trance...
The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;...
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song; Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view A fate more pleasing, a delight more true...