When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance...
The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
To silence gossip, don’t repeat it.
Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.
On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.
I want a brighter word than bright.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty?
Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.
Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.
My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.
The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.
O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel’s song!
They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.
And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
My spirit is too weak – mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave – O! I can feel the cold earth upon me – the daisies growing over me – O for this quiet – it will be my first.
Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines.