If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, Sandals more interwoven and complete...
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,...
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody! Attuning still the soul to tenderness, As if soft Pity, with unusual stress, Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,...
Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals, And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls....
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;...
O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,...
Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven, the domain Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun, The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters: Ocean...
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,...
This pleasant tale is like a little copse: The honied lines do freshly interlace, To keep the reader in so sweet a place, So that he here and there full hearted stops; And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops...
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,...
To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament....
He is to weet a melancholy carle: Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair, As hath the seeded thistle when in parle It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair...
In after-time, a sage of mickle lore Yclep'd Typographus, the Giant took, And did refit his limbs as heretofore, And made him read in many a learned book, And into many a lively legend look;...
Here all the summer could I stay, For there's Bishop's teign And King's teign And Coomb at the clear Teign head Where close by the stream You may have your cream...
In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool, There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air, A faery city 'neath the potent rule Of Emperor Elfinan; fam'd ev'rywhere...
Where be ye going, you Devon maid? And what have ye there i' the basket? Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy, Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel! Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye! They could not in the self-same mansion dwell Without some stir of heart, some malady;...
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; Without that modest softening that enhances The downcast eye, repentant of the pain...
This mortal body of a thousand days Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!...