Physician Nature! Let my spirit blood! O ease my heart of verse and let me rest; Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast....
O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung Even into thine own soft-conched ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see...
Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Doubled-lived in regions new? Yes, and those of heaven commune With the spheres of sun and moon;...
As Hermes once took to his feathers light When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept, So on a Delphic reed my idle spright So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft...
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? The transient pleasures as a vision seem, And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.
Of late two dainties were before me plac'd Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent, From the ninth sphere to me benignly sent That Gods might know my own particular taste:...
Hast thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem Pure as the ice-drop that froze on the mountain? Bright as the humming-bird's green diadem, When it flutters in sun-beams that shine through a fountain? ...
The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun, The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem, Though beautiful, cold, strange, as in a dream I dreamed long ago, now new begun....
Spirit here that reignest! Spirit here that painest! Spirit here that burneth! Spirit here that mourneth! Spirit! I bow My forehead low, Enshaded with thy pinions! Spirit! I look...
As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft...
After dark vapors have oppress'd our plains For a long dreary season, comes a day Born of the gentle South, and clears away From the sick heavens all unseemly stains....
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...
What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit, been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate....
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,...
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...
Come hither all sweet Maidens soberly Down looking aye, and with a chasten'd light Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see,...
Who loves to peer up at the morning sun, With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek, Let him with this sweet tale full often seek For meadows where the little rivers run;...
It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound....
The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound....