Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve, When streams of light pour down the golden west, And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest The silver clouds, far, far away to leave...
Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb, Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand, Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web, And snared by the ungloving of thine hand....
As late I rambled in the happy fields, What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew From his lush clover covert; when anew Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;...
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;...
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...
Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen...
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told...
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;...
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...
Upon a Sabbath-day it fell; Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell That call'd the folk to evening prayer; The city streets were clean and fair From wholesome drench of April rains;...
I cry your mercy, pity, love! aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen, without a blot!...
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...
Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies For more adornment a full thousand years; She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes, And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers:...
Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy To those who woo her with too slavish knees, But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;...
O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars, To thee the spring will be a harvest-time....
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...