A famous man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer’s joy.
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
Me this uncharted freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires, My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.
Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source, The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.
Nature’s old felicities.
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.
Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take that subtle power, the never-halting time.
No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.
What know we of the Blest above but that they sing, and that they love?
Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.
Minds that have nothing to confer find little to perceive.
The memory of the just survives in Heaven.
Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth.
The Poet, gentle creature as he is, Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times; His fits when he is neither sick nor well, Though no distress be near him but his own Unmanageable thoughts.
May books and nature be their early joy!
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay.
Let the moon shine on the in thy solitary walk; and let the misty mountain-winds be free to blow against thee.
Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.