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,...
O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate! Dear child of sorrow son of misery! How soon the film of death obscur'd that eye, Whence Genius mildly falsh'd, and high debate. How soon that voice, majestic and elate,...
Brother belov'd if health shall smile again, Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek: If e'er returning vigour bid these weak And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,...
Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind; but then the veil was rent,...
O that a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week, Then one poor year a thousand years would be, The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:...
Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy'd? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick...
O soft embalmer of the still midnight! Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;...
Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine, A forester deep in thy midmost trees, Did last eve ask my promise to refine Some English that might strive thine ear to please. But Elfin Poet 'tis impossible...
Son of the old Moon-mountains African! Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span: Nurse of swart nations since the world began,...
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....
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep, Nature's observatory, whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,...
Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance! In what diviner moments of the day Art thou most lovely? when gone far astray Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance, Or when serenely wandering in a trance...
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;...
Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell No God, no Demon of severe response, Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell Then to my human heart I turn at once: Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;...
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...
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....
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...