If Pegasus will let thee only ride him, Spurning my clumsy efforts to o'erstride him, Some fresh expedient the Muse will try, And walk on stilts, although she cannot fly.
The poet in his lone yet genial hour Gives to his eyes a magnifying power: Or rather he emancipates his eyes From the black shapeless accidents of size - In unctuous cones of kindling coal,...
Now as Heaven is my Lot, they're the Pests of the Nation! Wherever they can come With clankum and blankum 'Tis all Botheration, & Hell & Damnation, With fun, jeering Conjuring Sky-staring,...
A green and silent spot, amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing sky-lark ever poised himself. The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,...
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West! How many various-fated years have passed, What happy and what mournful hours, since last I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,...
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, It hath not been my use to pray With moving lips or bended knees; But silently, by slow degrees, My spirit I to Love compose, In humble trust mine eyelids close,...
Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no No question was asked me, it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try And to live on be YES; what can NO be? to die. ...