Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee,-air, earth, and skies! There ’s not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.
But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
Dreams, books, are each a world.
A Briton even in love should be A subject, not a slave!
Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark’s nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love.
The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, An appetite; a feeling and a love that had no need of a remoter charm by thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
A creature not too bright or good For human nature’s daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
A genial hearth, a hospitable board, and a refined rusticity.
The light that never was, on sea or land; The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.
There’s something in a flying horse, There’s something in a huge balloon.
The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
The wind, a sightless laborer, whistles at his task.
The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.
And when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,-alas! too few.
Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither.
And when the stream Which overflowed the soul was passed away, A consciousness remained that it had left Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory images and precious thoughts That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.
And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain.
Far from the world I walk, and from all care.
Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!
Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence.