1. She was an aged woman; and the years Which she had numbered on her toilsome way Had bowed her natural powers to decay. She was an aged woman; yet the ray...
Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen....
And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal Is that 'tis my distinction; if I fall, I shall not weep out of the vital day, To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.
I faint, I perish with my love! I grow Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale Under the evening's ever-changing glow: I die like mist upon the gale, And like a wave under the calm I fail.
To thirst and find no fill - to wail and wander With short unsteady steps - to pause and ponder - To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;...
Is it that in some brighter sphere We part from friends we meet with here? Or do we see the Future pass Over the Present's dusky glass? Or what is that that makes us seem...
I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret Which overlooked a wide Metropolis - And in the temple of my heart my Spirit Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss The dust of Desolations [altar] hearth -...
I would not be a king - enough Of woe it is to love; The path to power is steep and rough, And tempests reign above. I would not climb the imperial throne; 'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun...
Methought I was a billow in the crowd Of common men, that stream without a shore, That ocean which at once is deaf and loud; That I, a man, stood amid many more By a wayside..., which the aspect bore...
My head is wild with weeping for a grief Which is the shadow of a gentle mind. I walk into the air (but no relief To seek, - or haply, if I sought, to find; It came unsought); - to wonder that a chief...
O thou immortal deity Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, I do adjure thy power and thee By all that man may be, by all that he is not, By all that he has been and yet must be!
Such hope, as is the sick despair of good, Such fear, as is the certainty of ill, Such doubt, as is pale Expectation's food Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will Is powerless, and the spirit...
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 -
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,...
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.
1. My faint spirit was sitting in the light Of thy looks, my love; It panted for thee like the hind at noon For the brooks, my love. Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight...