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,...
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...
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....
The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;...
Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry; For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye. Not like the formal crest of latter days: But bending in a thousand graceful ways;...
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;...
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;...
St. Agnes' Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold:...
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;...
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:...
Two or three Posies With two or three simples, Two or three Noses With two or three pimples, Two or three wise men And two or three ninny's, Two or three guineas, Two or three raps...
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;...
Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak Definitively of these mighty things; Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings, That what I want I know not where to seek,...