The very flowers are sacred to the poor.
Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold.
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
Earth has not anything to show more fair.
A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free.
One with more of soul in his face than words on his tongue.
Recognizes ever and anon The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.
Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams.
And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love.
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.