Quando leggemmo il disiato riso

  esser baciato da cotanto amante,

  questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,

la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:

  Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse;

  quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.

. . . the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,

  But never a one so gay;

For he sings of what the world will be,

  When the years have died away.”

So every spirit, as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,

So it the fairer body doth procure

To habit in, and is more fairly dight

With cheerful grace and amiable sight:

For of the soul the body form doth take;

And soul is form, and doth the body make.

Why need I say, Louisa dear,

How glad I am to see you here,

  A lovely convalescent;

Risen from the bed of pain and fear

  And feverish heat incessant.

Obedient to the sweep of aery song,

  The mighty ministers

Unfurled their prismy wings.

  The magic car moved on;

The night was fair, innumerable stars

  Studded heaven’s dark blue vault;

  The eastern wave grew pale

  With the first smile of morn. . . .

The turbaned Race are poured in thickening swarms

Along the West; though driven from Aquitaine,

The Crescent glitters on the towers of Spain,

And soft Italia feels renewed alarms;

The scimitar, that yields not to the charms

Of ease, the narrow Bosphorus will disdain;

Nor long (that crossed) would Grecian hills detain

Their tents, and check the current of their arms.

Then blame not those who, by the mightiest lever

Known to the moral world, Imagination,

Upheave, so seems it, from her natural station

All Christendom—they sweep along (was never

So huge a host!)—to tear from the Unbeliever

The precious Tomb, their haven of salvation.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

Quite under ground: as flowers depart

To see their mother root, when they have blown,

    Where they together,

    All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of Power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing bell.

    We said amiss

    This or that is:

Thy word is all, if we could spell. . . .

And now in age I bud again

After so many deaths I live and write;

I once more smell the dew and rain

And relish versing; O my only Light!

    It cannot be

    That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell all night.

GEORGE HERBERT.

How rich, O Lord, how fresh thy visits are!

’Twas but just now my bleak leaves hopeless hung

    Sullied with dust and mud;

Each snarling blast shot through me, and did share

Their youth and beauty; cold showers nipped and wrung

Their spiciness and blood.

But since thou didst in one sweet glance survey

Their sad decays, I flourish and once more

    Breathe all perfumes and spice;

I smell a dew like myrrh and all the day

Wear in my bosom a full sun; such store

    Hath one beam from thy eyes.

But, ah my God, what fruit hast thou of this?

What one poor leaf did ever I let fall

    To wait upon thy wreath?

Thus thou all day a thankless weed dost dress,

And when thou hast done, a stench or fog is all

    The odour I bequeath.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

J’ai vu parfois, au fond d’un théâtre banal

    Qu’enflammait l’orchestre sonore,

Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal

    Une miraculeuse aurore;

J’ai vu parfois au fond d’un théâtre banal

Un être qui n’était que lumière; or et gaze,

    Terrasser l’énorme Satan;

Mais mon coeur, que jamais ne visite l’extase,

    Est un théâtre-où l’on attend

Toujours, toujours en vain, l’Être aux ailes de gaze!

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Dear night! this world’s defeat;

The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;

The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat,

Which none disturb!

Christ’s progress and His prayer time;

The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

God’s silent searching flight:

When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all

His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;

His still, soft call;

His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,

When spirits their fair kindred catch.

Were all my loud evil days

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,

Whose peace but by some angel’s wing or voice

Is seldom rent;

Then I in Heaven all the long year

Would keep, and never wander here.

But living where the sun

Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire

Themselves and others, I consent and run

To every mire,

And by this world’s ill-guiding light,

Err more than I can do by night.

There is in God (some say)

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear;

O for that night! where I in him

Might live invisible and dim.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Tes pas, enfants de mon silence,

Saintement, lentement placés,

Vers le lit de ma vigilance

Procèdent, muets et glacés.

Personne pure, ombre divine,

Qu’ils sont doux, tes pas retenus!

Dieux! . . . tous les dons que je divine

Viennent à moi sur ces pieds nus!

Si, de tes lèvres avancées,

Tu prépares, pour l’apaiser,

A l’habitant de mes pensés

La nourriture d’un baiser,

Ne hâte pas cet acte tendre,

Douceur d’être et de n’être pas,

Car j’ai vécu de vous attendre,

Et mon cœur n’était que vos pas.

PAUL VALERY.^*

How should I praise thee, Lord, how should my rhymes

Gladly engrave thy love in steel,

If what my soul doth feel sometimes,

My soul might ever feel!

Although there were some forty heavens or more,

Sometimes I peer above them all;

Sometimes I hardly reach a score,

Sometimes to hell I fall.

GEORGE HERBERT.

But first a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends;

The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends.

Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony

That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible: the Unseen its truth reveals;

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;

Its wings are almost free—its home, its harbour found,

Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.

O dreadful is the check—intense the agony—

When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;

When the pulse begins to throb—the brain to think again—

The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

EMILY BRONTË.

How should I praise thee, Lord, . .

If what my soul doth feel sometimes,

My soul might ever feel;

                might mortal breath

Express the passion then inspired,

Evil would die a natural death,

And nothing transient be desired;

Could we but live at will upon this perfect height,

Could we but always keep the passion of this peace . . .

Then we were all divine.

Earth trembled from her entrails, as again

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

Sky loured and, muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin

Original; while Adam took no thought,

Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate

Her former trespass feared, the more to soothe

Him with her loved society; that now,

As with new wine intoxicated both,

They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel

Divinity within them breeding wings

Wherewith to scorn the Earth. But that false fruit

Far other operation first displayed,

Carnal desire inflaming.

JOHN MILTON.

The Revelation

An idle poet, here and there

  Looks round him, but, for all the rest,

The world, unfathomably fair,

  Is duller than a witling’s jest.

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;

  They lift their heavy lids and look;

And, lo, what one sweet page can teach

  They read with joy, then shut the book.

And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,

  And most forget; but either way,

That, and the child’s unheeded dream,

  Is all the light of all their day.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—

Ah well! It is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, alms, vows.

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!

These are indeed the barn: withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all the hallows.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

The unthrift sun shot vital gold,

  A thousand pieces,

And heaven its azure did unfold,

  Chequered with snowy fleeces.

  The air was all in spice.

    And every bush

A garland wore: thus fed my eye,

  But all the ear lay hush.

Only a little fountain lent

  Some use for ears,

And on the dumb shades language spent,

  The music of her tears.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth, whose beauty is past change:

    Praise him.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

This sycamore, oft musical with bees—

Such tents the Patriarchs loved. O long unharmed

May all its agèd boughs o’er-canopy

The small round basin, which this jutting stone

Keeps pure from falling leaves! Long may the Spring,

Quietly as a sleeping infant’s breath,

Send up cold waters to the traveller

With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease

Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,

Which, at the bottom, like a Fairy’s page,

As merry and no taller, dances still,

Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the fount.

Here twilight is and coolness; here is moss,

A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.

Thou may’st toil far and find no second tree.

Drink, Pilgrim, here; here rest! And if thy heart

Be innocent, here too shalt thou refresh

Thy spirit, listening to some gentle sound,

Or passing gale, or hum of murmuring bees.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

                The very name of God

Sounds like a juggler’s charm; and, bold with joy.

(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,

Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,

Drops his blue-fringèd lids and holds them close.

And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,

Cries out, “Where is it?”

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Thus I, easy philosopher,

Among the birds and trees confer,

And little now to make me wants

Or of the fowls, or of the plants . . .

Already I begin to call

In their most learned original;

And where I language want, my signs

The bird upon the bough divines,

And more attentive there doth sit

Than if she were with lime-twigs knit.

No leaf does tremble in the wind

Which I, returning, cannot find.

Out of these scattered Sibyl’s leaves

Strange prophecies my phancy weaves;

And in one history consumes,

Like Mexique paintings, all the plumes,

What Rome, Greece, Palestine e’er said.

I in this light mosaic read.

Thrice happy he who, not mistook,

Hath read in Nature’s mystic book.

ANDREW MARVELL.

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen—

Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall—that day

When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out

But still all equals in their rage of gladness

Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon

In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun

And once bore hops: and on that other day,

When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower

Into an April morning, stirring and sweet

And warm. Strange solitude was there, and silence.

A mightier charm than any in the Tower

Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard,

Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,

Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums

And fifes were playing “The British Grenadiers.”

The men, the music piercing that solitude

And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,

And have forgotten since that beauty passed.

EDWARD THOMAS.

Quelquefois dans un beau jardin,

    Où je trainais mon atonie,

J’ai senti comme une ironie

    Le soleil déchirer mon sein;

Et le printemps et la verdure

    Ont tant humilié mon cœur,

Que j’ai puni sur une fleur

    L’insolence de la nature.

Beneath is spread, like a green sea,

The waveless plain of Lombardy,

Bounded by the vaporous air,

Islanded by cities fair;

Underneath Day’s azure eyes

Ocean’s nursling, Venice, lies,

A peopled labyrinth of walls,

Amphitrite’s destined halls,

Which her hoary sire now paves

With his blue and beaming waves.

Lo! the sun upsprings behind,

Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined

On the level quivering line

Of the waters crystalline;

And before that chasm of light,

As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

Shine like obelisks of fire,

Pointing with inconstant motion

From the altar of dark ocean

To the sapphire-tinted skies;

As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise,

As to pierce the dome of gold,

Where Apollo spoke of old.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

No sound is uttered,—but a deep

    And solemn harmony pervades

The hollow vale from steep to steep,

    And penetrates the glades.

Far distant images draw nigh

Called forth by wondrous potency

Of beamy radiance, that imbues

Whate’er it strikes with gem-like hues.

In vision exquisitely clear

    Herds range along the mountain side;

    And glistening antlers are descried;

And gilded flocks appear.

Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal eve!

    But long as god-like wish, or hope divine,

Informs my spirit, ne’er can I believe

    That this magnificence is wholly thine.

From worlds not quickened by the sun

A portion of the gift is won;

An intermingling of Heaven’s pomp is spread

On ground which British shepherds tread.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

What’s that which, ere I spake, was gone?

    So joyful and intense a spark

That, whilst o’erhead the wonder shone,

    The day, before but dull grew dark?

I do not know; but this I know,

    That, had the splendour lived a year,

The truth that I some heavenly show

    Did see, could not be now more clear.

This too I know; might mortal breath

    Express the passion then inspired,

Evil would die a natural death,

    And nothing transient be desired.

And error from the soul would pass,

    And leave the senses pure and strong

As sunbeams. But the best, alas!

    Has neither memory nor tongue.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

The night is full of stars, full of magnificence;

  Nightingales hold the wood, and fragrance loads the dark.

  Behold what fires august, what lights eternal! Hark!

What passionate music poured in passionate love’s defence.

Breathe but the wafting wind’s nocturnal frankincense!

  Only to feel this night’s great heart, only to mark

  The splendours and the glooms, brings back the patriarch

Who on Chaldaean wastes found God through reverence.

Could we but live at will upon this perfect height,

  Could we but always keep the passion of this peace,

Could we but face unshamed the look of this pure light,

  Could we but win earth’s heart and give desire release,

Then were we all divine, and then were ours by right

These stars, these nightingales, these scents; then shame would cease.

LIONEL JOHNSON.

What wondrous life is this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons, as I pass

Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less

Withdraws into its happiness;

The mind, that ocean, where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find;

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds and other seas,

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot

Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,

Casting the body’s vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide;

There like a bird it sits and sings,

Then whets and combs its silver wings;

And, till prepared for longer flight,

Waves in its plumes the various light.

ANDREW MARVELL.

Par les soirs bleus d’été j’irai dans les sentiers,

Picoté par les blés, fouler l’herbe menue;

Rêveur, j’en sentirai la fraîcheur à mes pieds,

Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue.

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien,

Mais l’amour infini me montera dans l’âme;

Et j’irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,

Par la Nature—heureux, comme avec une femme.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise

Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour

Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier

Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,

Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;

And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a

Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder

Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—

These things, these things were here and but the beholder

Wanting; which two when they once meet,

The heart rears wings bold and bolder

And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

The whole of life is womanhood to thee,

Momently wedded with enormous bliss.

        To fly from, need not be to hate mankind:

        All are not fit with them to stir and toil,

        Nor is it discontent to keep the mind

        Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

In the hot throng, where we become the spoil

Of our infection, till too late and long

We may deplore and struggle with the coil,

In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong

Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

Is it not better, then, to be alone,

And love Earth only for its earthly sake?

By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,

Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,

Which feeds it as a mother who doth make

A fair but froward infant her own care,

Kissing its cries away, as these awake;—

Is it not better thus our lives to wear

Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me; and to me

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum

Of human cities torture: I can see

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be

A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,

And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:

I look upon the peopled desert past,

As on a place of agony and strife,

Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast,

To act and suffer, but remount at last

With a fresh pinion, which I feel to spring,

Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast

Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,

Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.

And when at length the mind shall be all free

From what it hates in this degraded form,

Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be

Existent happier in the fly and worm,

When elements to elements conform

And dust is as it should be, shall I not

Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?

The bodiless thought? The Spirit of each spot?

Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

LORD BYRON.

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks

Our ready minds to fellowship divine,

A fellowship with essence; till we shine,

Full alchemized and free of space. Behold

The clear religion of heaven! Fold

A rose leaf round thy finger’s taperness

And soothe thy lips; hist, when the airy stress

Of music’s kiss impregnates the free winds,

And with a sympathetic touch unbinds

Aeolian magic from their lucid wombs:

Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;

Old ditties sigh above their father’s grave;

Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave

Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;

Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,

Where long ago a giant battle was;

And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass

In every place where infant Orpheus slept.

Feel we these things?—that moment have we stepped

Into a sort of oneness, and our state

Is like a floating spirit’s. But there are

Richer entanglements, enthralments far

More self-destroying, leading by degrees

To the chief intensity; the crown of these

Is made of love and friendship and sits high

Upon the forehead of humanity.

All its more ponderous and bulky worth

Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth

A steady splendour; but at the tip-top

There hangs by unseen film an orbèd drop

Of light, and that is love: its influence

Thrown in our eyes genders a novel sense

At which we start and fret; till in the end,

Melting into its radiance, we blend,

Mingle, and so become a part of it,—

Nor with aught else can our souls interknit

So wingedly; when we combine therewith,

Life’s self is nourished by its proper pith,

And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.

Ay, so delicious is the unsating food,

That men, who might have towered in the van

Of all the congregated world, to fan

And winnow from the coming step of time

All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime

Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,

Have been content to let occasion die,

Whilst they did sleep in love’s Elysium.

And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb

Than speak against this ardent listlessness:

For I have ever thought that it might bless

The world with benefits unknowingly;

As does the nightingale, up-perchèd high,

And cloistered among cool and bunchèd leaves—

She sings but to her love, nor e’er conceives

How tip-toe Night holds back her dark grey hood.

Just so may love, although ’tis understood

The mere commingling of passionate breath,

Produce more than our searching witnesseth:

What I know not: but who, of men, can tell

That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell

To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,

The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,

The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,

The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,

Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,

If human souls did never kiss and greet?

JOHN KEATS.

              there are

Richer entanglements, enthralments far

More self-destroying, leading by degrees

To the chief intensity.

                when we combine therewith,

Life’s self is nourished by its proper pith,

And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.

Grands bois, vous m’effrayez comme des cathédrales,

Vous hurlez comme l’orgue, et dans nos coeurs maudits,

Chambres d’éternel deuil où vibrent de vieux râles,

Répondent les échos de vos De Profundis.

Je te hais, Océan! tes bonds et tes tumultes,

Mon esprit les retrouve en lui! Ce rire amer

De l’homme vaincu, plein de sanglots et d’insultes,

Je l’entends dans le rire énorme de la mer.

Comme tu me plairais, ô Nuit! sans ces étoiles

Dont la lumière parle un langage connu!

Car je cherche le vide, et le noir, et le nu!

Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles

Ou vivent, jaillissant de mon œil par milliers,

Des êtres disparus, aux regards familiers!

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Descend, O Lamb of God, and take away the imputation of Sin

By the creation of States and the deliverance of individuals evermore, Amen.

Thus wept they in Beulah over the four regions of Albion:

But many doubted and despaired and imputed Sin and righteousness,

To Individuals and not to States, and these slept in Ulro.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

Affections, Instincts, Principles and Powers,

Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control—

So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,

Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.

Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,

Spring the foundations of the shadowy throne

Where Man’s one nature, queen-like, sits alone,

Centred in a majestic unity;

And rays her powers, like sister islands, seen

Linking their coral arms under the sea;

Or clustered peaks, with plunging gulfs between

Spanned by aerial arches, all of gold,

Where’er the chariot wheels of life are rolled

In cloudy circles, to eternity.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

For, oh! is it you, is it you,

Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,

And mountains, that fill us with joy,

Or the poet who sings you so well?

Is it you, O beauty, O grace,

O charm, O romance, that we feel,

Or the voice which reveals what you are?

Are ye, like daylight and sun,

Shared and rejoiced in by all?

Or are ye immersed in the mass

Of matter, and hard to extract,

Or sunk at the core of the world,

Too deep for the most to discern?

Like stars in the deep of the sky,

Which arise on the glass of the sage,

But are lost when their watcher is gone.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Nature has no outline, but Imagination has.

Nature has no tune, but Imagination has.

Nature has no supernatural, and dissolves.

Imagination is eternity.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

Of thee, kind boy, I ask no red and white

  To make up my delight,

  No odd becoming graces,

Black eyes, or know-not-whats in faces;

Make me but mad enough, give me good store

Of love for her I court,

  I ask no more;

’Tis love in love that makes the sport.

There’s no such thing as that we beauty call;

  It is mere cozenage all;

  For though some long ago

Liked certain colours mingled so and so,

That doth not tie me now from choosing new;

  If I a fancy take

  To black and blue,

That fancy doth it beauty make.

’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite

  Makes eating a delight;

  And if I like one dish

More than another, that a pheasant is.

What in our watches, that in us is found,

  So to the height and nick

  We up be wound,

No matter by what hand or trick.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite

Makes eating a delight.

If I a fancy take

To black and blue,

That fancy doth it beauty make.

Hector

Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost

The holding.

Troilus

            What is aught but as ’tis valued?

Hector

But value dwells not in particular will;

It holds his estimate and dignity

As well wherein ’tis precious in itself

As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry

To make the service greater than the god;

And the will dotes that is inclinable

To what infectiously itself affects,

Without some image of the affected merit.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Mes bouquins refermés sur le nom de Paphos,

Il m’amuse d’élire avec le seul génie

Une ruine, par mille écumes bénie

Sous l’hyacinthe, au loin, de ses jours triomphaux.

Coure le froid avec ses silences de faulx,

Je n’y hululerai pas de vide nénie

Si ce très blanc ébat au ras du sol dénie

A tout site l’honneur du paysage faux.

Ma faim qui d’aucuns fruits ici ne se régale

Trouve en leur docte manque une saveur égale:

Qu’un éclate de chair, humain et parfumant!

Le pied sur quelque guivre où notre amour tisonne,

Je pense plus longtemps peut-être éperdûment

A l’autre, au sein brulé d’une antique amazone.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live:

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!

  And would we aught behold, of higher worth

Than that inanimate cold world, allowed

To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd,

  Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

  Enveloping the earth—

And from the soul itself must there be sent

  A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows

Like harmony in music; there is a dark

Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles

Discordant elements, makes them cling together

In one society. How strange that all

The terrors, pains and early miseries,

Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused

Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,

And that a needful part, in making up

The calm existence that is mine, when I

Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!

Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;

Whether her fearless visitings, or those

That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light

Opening the peaceful clouds; or she may use

Severer interventions, ministry

More palpable, as best might suit her aim.

One summer evening (led by her) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree

Within a rocky cave, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in

Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice

Of mountain echoes did my boat move on;

Leaving behind her still, on either side,

Small circles glittering idly in the moon,

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,

Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view

Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,

The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan;

When, from behind that craggy steep, till then

The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,

And growing still in stature the grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the covert of the willow tree:

There in her mooring-place I left my bark,—

And through the meadows homeward went in grave

And serious mood; but after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts

There hung a darkness, call it solitude

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The air is damp and hushed and close

As a sick man’s room, when he taketh repose

  An hour before death;

My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves

At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves

  And the breath

  Of the fading edges of box beneath

And the year’s last rose.

  Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

    Over its grave i’ the earth so chilly;

  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

    Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

To a Fish

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,

Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,

Gulping salt water everlastingly,

Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,

And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;

And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be—

Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,

Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:—

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,

What is’t ye do? What life lead? Eh, dull goggles?

How do ye vary your vile days and nights?

How pass your Sundays. Are ye still but joggles

In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,

And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

A Fish replies

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,

With the first sight of thee didst make our race

For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,

Grimly divided from the breast below!

Thou that on dry land horribly dost go

With a split body and most ridiculous pace,

Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,

Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!

O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,

How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry

And dreary sloth? What particle canst share

Of the only blessed life, the watery?

I sometimes see of ye an actual pair

Go by, linked fin by fin, most odiously.

The Fish turns into a Man, and then into a Spirit,

and again speaks

Indulge thy smiling scorn, if smiling still,

O man! and loathe, but with a sort of love;

For difference must its use by difference prove,

And, in sweet clang, the spheres with music fill.

One of the spirits am I, that at his will

Live in whate’er has life—fish, eagle, dove—

No hate, no pride, beneath nought, nor above,

A visitor of the rounds of God’s sweet skill.

Man’s life is warm, glad, sad, ’twixt loves and graves,

Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,

Heaven-gazing; and his angel-wings he craves:—

The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,

A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,

Quickened with touches of transporting fear.

LEIGH HUNT.

The world below the brine,

Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves.

Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf,

Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white and gold—the play of light through the water,

Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment of the swimmers,

Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom:

The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray or disporting with his flukes,

The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,

Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes—sight in those ocean depths—breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.

The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere:

The change onwards from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

WALT WHITMAN.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

Are they shadows that we see?

And can shadows pleasure give?

Pleasures only shadows be,

Cast by bodies we conceive,

And are made the things we deem

In those figures which they seem.

But these pleasures vanish fast

Which by shadows are exprest.

Pleasures are not if they last;

In their passage is their best;

Glory is most bright and gay

In a flash, and so away.

Feed apace, then, greedy eyes,

On the wonder you behold:

Take it sudden as it flies,

Though you take it not to hold:

When your eyes have done their part,

Thought must length it in the heart.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

Oh, wearisome condition of humanity!

  Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;

  Created sick, commanded to be sound;

    What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?

    Passion and Reason, self-division’s cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power

  To make offences that it may forgive?

Nature herself doth her own self deflower

  To hate those errors she herself doth give.

    But how should man think what he may not do,

    If Nature did not fail, and punish too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

  Only commands things difficult and hard.

Forbids us all things which it knows we lust,

  Makes easy pains, impossible reward.

    If Nature did not take delight in blood,

    She would have made more easy ways to good.

We that are bound by vows and by promotion,

  With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,

To lead belief in good and still devotion,

  To preach of heaven’s wonders and delights;

    Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,

    He finds the God there far unlike his books.

FULKE GREVILLE.

              O cruel goddes, that governe

This world with binding of your word eterne,

And wryten in the table of adamaunt

Your parlement and your eterne graunt,

What is mankinde more unto you holde

Than is the sheep that rouketh in the folde?

For slayn is man right as another beste,

And dwelleth eke in prison and arreste,

And hath siknesse and great adversitee,

And ofte times gilteless, pardee!

What governaunce is in this prescience

That gilteless tormenteth innocence?

And yet encreaseth this all my penaunce,

That man is bounden to his observaunce,

For Goddes sake, to letten of his wille,

Ther as a beste may al his lust fulfille.

But when a beste is dead, he hath no peyne;

But man after his death moot wepe and pleyne,

Though in this world he have care and woe.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

Whenas the rye reach to the chin,

And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe within,

Strawberries swimming in the cream,

And schoolboys playing in the stream;

Then, O, then, O, then, O, my true love said,

Till that time come again,

She could not live a maid.

GEORGE PEELE.

Now the lusty spring is seen:

  Golden yellow, gaudy blue

  Daintily invite the view.

Everywhere, on every green,

Roses blushing as they blow

  And enticing men to pull,

Lilies whiter than the snow,

  Woodbines of sweet honey full:

    All love’s emblems, and all cry:

    “Ladies, if not plucked, we die!”

Yet the lusty spring has stayed:

  Blushing red and purest white

  Daintily to love invite

Every woman, every maid.

Cherries kissing as they grow,

  And inviting men to taste,

Apples even ripe below,

  Winding gently to the waist:

    All love’s emblems, and all cry:

    “Ladies, if not plucked, we die!”

JOHN FLETCHER.

In an arbour green, asleep whereas I lay,

The birds sang sweet in the middès of the day;

I dreamèd fast of love and play:

    In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

R. WEVER.

Spatiari dulce est

per loca nemorosa;

dulcius est carpere

lilia cum rosa;

dulcissimum est ludere

cum virgine formosa!

ANON.

Venus, and young Adonis sitting by her,

Under a myrtle shade began to woo him;

She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,

And as he fell to her, so fell she to him.

“Even thus,” quoth she, “the warlike god unlaced me!”

And then she clasped Adonis in her arms!

“Even thus,” quoth she, “the wanton god embraced me!”

As if the boy should use like loving charms.

But he, a wayward boy, refused the offer,

And ran away, the beauteous queen neglecting;

Showing both folly to abuse her proffer,

And all his sex of cowardice detecting.

    O that I had my mistress at that bay,

    To kiss and clip me till I ran away!

BARTHOLOMEW GRIFFIN.

Cupid, pardon what is past,

And forgive our sins at last!

Then we will be coy no more,

But thy deity adore;

Troths at fifteen will we plight,

And will tread a dance each night

In the fields, or by the fire,

With the youths that have desire.

Given ear-rings will we wear,

Bracelets of our lovers’ hair

Which they on their arms shall twist,

With their names carved, on our wrist,

All the money that we owe

We in tokens shall bestow;

And learn to write that, when ’tis sent,

Only our loves know what is meant;

O, then pardon what is past,

And forgive our sins at last!

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

O for a bowl of fat canary,

Rich Aristippus, sparkling sherry!

Some nectar else from Juno’s dairy;

O these draughts would make us merry!

O for a wench! I deal in faces

And in other daintier things;

Tickled I am with her embraces;

Fine dancing in such fairy rings!

O for a plump, fat leg of mutton!

Veal, lamb, capon, pig and coney!

None is happy but a glutton,

None an ass but who wants money.

Wines, indeed, and girls are good;

But brave victuals feast the blood;

For wenches, wine and lusty cheer

Jove would come down to surfeit here.

THOMAS MIDDLETON.

And who has seen a fair alluring face,

  A lusty girl yclad in quaint array,

Whose dainty hand makes music with her lace,

  And tempts thy thoughts, and steals thy sense away;

Who has beheld fair Venus in her pride

  Of nakedness, all alabaster white,

In ivory bed, strait laid by Mars his side,

  And hath not been enchanted by the sight;

To wish to dally and to offer game,

  To coy, to court, et cetera to do;

(Forgive me, Chasteness, if in terms of shame,

  To thy renown, I paint what ’longs thereto.)

GEORGE PEELE.

Music and poetry is his delight;

Therefore I’ll have Italian masques by night,

Sweet speeches, comedies and pleasing shows.

And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,

Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;

My men like satyrs, grazing on the lawns,

Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay;

Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,

With hair that gilds the water as it glides,

Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,

And in his sportful hands an olive tree,

To hide those parts which men delight to see,

Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by,

One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,

Shall by the angry goddess be transformed

And, running in the likeness of a hart,

By yelping hounds pulled down shall seem to die.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

So fair a church as this had Venus none:

The walls were of discoloured jasper-stone,

Wherein was Proteus carved; and overhead

A lively vine of green sea-agate spread,

Where by one hand light-headed Bacchus hung,

And with the other wine from grapes out-wrung.

Of crystal shining fair the pavement was;

The town of Sestos called it Venus’ glass:

There might you see the gods in sundry shapes

Committing heady riots, incest, rapes;

For know that underneath this radiant floor

Was Danae’s statue in a brazen tower;

Jove slily stealing from his sister’s bed

To dally with Idalian Ganymede,

And for his love, Europa, bellowing loud,

And tumbling with the Rainbow in a cloud;

Blood-quaffing Mars heaving the iron net,

Which limping Vulcan and his Cyclops set;

Love kindling fire to burn such towns as Troy;

Silvanus weeping for the lovely boy

That now is turned into a cypress tree,

Under whose shade the wood gods love to be.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

        is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Enough, enough, ambrosial plumèd Boy!

My bosom is aweary of thy breath.

Thou kissest joy

To death.

Have pity of my clay-conceivèd birth

And maiden’s simple mood,

Which longs for ether and infinitude,

As thou, being God, crav’st littleness and earth!

Thou art immortal, thou canst ever toy,

Nor savour less

The sweets of thine eternal childishness,

And hold thy godhead bright in far employ.

Me, to quite other custom life-inured,

Ah, loose from thy caress!

’Tis not to be endured!

Undo thine arms and let me see the sky,

By this infatuating flame obscured.

Oh, I should feel thee nearer to my heart

If thou and I

Shone each to each respondently apart,

Like stars which one the other trembling spy,

Distinct and lucid in extremes of air.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

Æstuans intrinsecus

ira vehementi

in amaritudine

loquar meæ menti:

factus de materia

levis elementi

similis sum folio

de quo ludunt venti.

Cum sit enim proprium

viro sapienti

supra petram ponere

sedem fundamenti,

stultus ego comparor

fluvio labenti,

sub eodem aere

nunquam permanenti

Feror ego veluti

sine nauta navis,

ut per vias aeris

vaga fertur avis,

non me tenent vincula,

non me tenet clavis,

quæro mihi similes,

et adjungor pravis.

Via lata gradior

more juventutis,

implico me vitiis

inmemor virtutis,

voluptatis avidus

magis quam salutis,

mortuus in anima

curam gero cutis.

Præsul discretissime,

veniam te precor:

morte bona morior,

dulci nece necor,

meum pectus sauciat

puellarum decor,

et quas tactu nequeo,

saltem corde mæchor.

THE ARCHPOET.

                Take back thy gift;

Why should a man desire in any way

To vary from the kindly race of men,

Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance

Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

O why was I born with a different face?

Why was I not born like the rest of my race?

When I look, each one starts! when I speak, I offend.

Then I’m silent and passive, and lose every friend.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

That thee is sent, receive in buxomnesse,

The wrastling for this world axeth a fal.

Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:

Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!

Know thy countree, look up, thank God of all;

Hold the hye wey and lat thy gost thee lede,

And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

O saisons, ô châteaux,

Quelle âme est sans défauts?

O saisons, ô châteaux!

J’ai fait la magique étude

Du bonheur que nul n’élude:

O vive lui! chaque fois

Que chante le coq gaulois

Mais je n’aurai nulle envie,

Il s’est chargé de ma vie.

Ce charme! il prit âme et corps

Et dispersa tous efforts.

Que comprendre à ma parole?

Il fait qu’elle fuit et vole!

O saisons, ô châteaux!

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Oisive jeunesse

A tout asservie,

Par délicatesse

J’ai perdu ma vie.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Tell me, ye piebald butterflies, who poise

  Extrinsic with intrinsic joys;

What gain ye from such short-lived, fruitless, empty toys?

Ye fools, who barter gold for trash, report,

  Can fire in pictures warm? Can sport

That stings the mock-sense fill? How low’s your Heaven, how short!

Go, chaffer bliss for pleasure, which is had

  More by the beast than man; the bad

Swim in their mirth (Christ wept, ne’er laughed); the best are sad.

EDWARD BENLOWES.

I struck the board and cried, No more!

    I will abroad.

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,

Loose as the winds, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

    Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

Before my tears did drown it,

Is the year only lost to me?

    Have I no bays to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?

      All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,

      And thou hast hands.

    Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute

Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage,

      Thy rope of sands,

Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee

    Good cable, to enforce and draw

      And be thy law,

    While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

      Away; take heed;

      I will abroad.

Call in thy death’s head there; tie up thy fears.

      He that forbears

    To suit and serve his need,

      Deserves his load.

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

      At every word,

Methoughts I heard one calling, Child:

    And I replied, My Lord.

GEORGE HERBERT.

Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse juive,

Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre étendu,

Je me pris à songer près de ce corps vendu

A la triste beauté dont mon désir se prive.

Je me représentai sa majesté naïve,

Son regard de vigueur et de grâces armé,

Ses cheveux qui lui font un casque parfumé

Et dont le souvenir pour l’amour me ravive.

Car j’eusse avec ferveur baisé ton noble corps,

Et depuis tes pieds frais jusqu’à tes noires tresses

Deroulé le trésor des profondes caresses,

Si, quelque soir, d’un pleur obtenu sans efforts

Tu pouvais seulement, ô reine des cruelles!

Obscurcir la splendeur de tes froides prunelles.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Que les grandes beautés causent de grandes peines!

Quoiqu’on nomme l’Amour un mal délicieux,

Que leurs premiers attraits sont doux et gracieux!

Mais qu’on trouve à la fin leurs douceurs inhumaines!

Que d’aveugles désirs, de craintes incertaines,

De pensers criminels, de soins ambitieux,

Font sentir aux amants la colère des Cieux,

Et le malheureux sort des espérances vaines!

Je doute cependant si je voudrais guérir

De l’extrème bonheur dont je meurs sans mourir:

Tant l’objet est puissant qui m’a l’âme enchantée.

Je crois qu’enfin l’esclave est jaloux de ses fers,

Je crois que le vautour est doux à Prométhée,

Et que les Ixion se plaisent aux Enfers.

JEAN OGIER DE GOMBAULD.

Je doute cependant si je voudrais guérir

De l’extrème bonheur dont je meurs sans mourir.

Belle Philis, on désespère

Alors qu’on espère toujours.

. . . le vautour est doux à Prométhée,

Et que les Ixion se plaisent aux Enfers?

Now what is love, I pray thee tell?

It is that fountain and that well,

Where pleasure and repentance dwell.

It is perhaps the sauncing bell

That tolls us into heaven or hell,

And this is love, as I hear tell.

ANON.

Hear, ye ladies that despise,

What the mighty love has done:

Fear examples and be wise:

  Fair Calisto was a nun:

Leda, sailing on the stream,

  To deceive the hopes of man,

Love accounting but a dream,

  Doted on a silver swan;

    Danae in a brazen tower,

    Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear, ye ladies that are coy,

  What the mighty love can do:

Fear the fierceness of the boy:

  The chaste moon he makes to woo;

Vesta, kindling holy fires,

  Circled round about with spies,

Never dreaming loose desires,

  Doting on the altar dies;

    Ilion, in a short hour, higher

    He can build, and once more fire.

JOHN FLETCHER.

There are two births: the one when light

First strikes the new awakened sense;

The other when two souls unite,

And we must count our life from thence.

When you loved me and I loved you,

Then both of us were born anew.

WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so. But this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

JOHN DONNE.

Passions are likened best to floods and streams:

The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;

So, when affection yields discourse, it seems

The bottom is but shallow whence they come.

  They that are rich in words, in words discover

  That they are poor in that which makes a lover.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

Ametas and Thestylis making hay-ropes

Ametas

Think’st thou that this love can stand,

While thou still dost say me nay?

Love unpaid does soon disband:

Love binds love, as hay binds hay.

Thestylis

Think’st thou that this rope would twine,

If we both should turn one way?

Where both parties so combine,

Neither love will twist, nor hay.

Ametas

Thus you vain excuses find,

Which yourself and us delay;

And love ties a woman’s mind

Looser than with ropes of hay.

Thestylis

What you cannot constant hope

Must be taken as you may.

Ametas

Then let’s both lay by our rope

And go kiss within the hay.

ANDREW MARVELL.

If thou long’st so much to learn, sweet boy, what ’tis to love,

Do but fix thy thought on me, and thou shalt quickly prove.

  Little suit at first shall win

    Way to thy abashed desire;

  But then will I hedge thee in,

Salamander-like, with fire!

THOMAS CAMPION.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and, till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof—and, proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

  All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Frate, la nostra volontà quieta

virtù di carità, che fa volerne

sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.

DANTE ALIGHIERI.

Siren Chorus

Troop home to silent grots and caves,

  Troop home and mimic as you go

The mournful winding of the waves,

  Which to their dark abysses flow.

At this sweet hour all things beside

  In amorous pairs to covert creep;

The swans that brush the evening tide

  Homewards in snowy couples keep.

In his green den the murmuring seal,

  Close by his sleek companion lies,

While singly we to bedward steal,

  And close in fruitless sleep our eyes.

In bowers of love men take their rest,

  In loveless bowers we sigh alone;

With bosom-friends are others blest,

  But we have none—but we have none.

GEORGE DARLEY.

Δἐδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα

κὰι Πληΐαδες, μἐσαι δέ

νὐκτες, πάρα δ’ἔρχετ ὤρα,

ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

SAPPHO.

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

The small rain down can rain?

Christ, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again!

ANON.

The wind sounds like a silver wire,

And from beyond the moon a fire

Is poured upon the hills, and nigher

The skies stoop down in their desire;

  And isled in sudden seas of light,

  My heart, pierced through with fierce delight,

  Bursts into blossom in his sight.

My whole soul waiting silently,

All naked in a sultry sky,

Droops blinded with his shining eye:

I will possess him or will die.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

  With naked foot stalking within my chamber.

Once have I seen them gentle, tame and meek

  That now are wild and do not once remember

That sometimes they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; but now they range,

  Busily seeking in continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise,

  Twenty times better; but once especial:—

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

  When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

And there withal so sweetly did me kiss,

  And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream, for I lay broad awaking.

  But all is turned now, through my gentleness,

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking,

  And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also to use new-fangleness,

But since that I unkindly so am served,

“How like you this?”—what hath she now deserved?

SIR THOMAS WYAT.

O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus—

When I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drowned,

Reply not in how many fathoms deep

They lie indrenched. I tell thee I am mad

In Cressid’s love: thou answer’st, she is fair;

Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;

Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,

In whose comparison all whites are ink,

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure

The cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense

Hard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell’st me,

As true thou tell’st me, when I say I love her,

But saying thus, instead of oil and balm,

Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me

The knife that made it.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

I do not love thee for that fair,

Rich fan of thy most curious hair,

Though the wires thereof be drawn

Finer than the threads of lawn,

  And are softer than the leaves,

  On which the subtle spinner weaves.

I do not love thee for those soft

Red coral lips I’ve kissed so oft;

Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard

To speech, whence music still is heard;

  Though from these lips a kiss being taken

  Would tyrants melt and death awaken.

I do not love thee, O my fairest!

For that richest, for that rarest

Silver pillar which stands under

Thy round head, that globe of wonder;

  Though that neck be whiter far

  Than towers of polished ivory are.

I do not love thee for those mountains

Hilled with snow, whence milky fountains

(Sugared sweets, as syrup’d berries)

Must one day run, through pipes of cherries:

  O how much those breasts do move me!

  Yet for them I do not love thee.

I love not for those eyes, nor hair,

Nor cheeks nor lips, nor teeth so rare,

Nor for thy speech, thy neck, nor breast,

Nor for thy belly, nor the rest,

Nor for thy hand, nor foot so small,

But—wouldst thou know, dear sweet?—for all!

THOMAS CAREW.

O loaded curls, release your store

Of warmth and scent, as once before

The tingling hair did, lights and darks

Outbreaking into fiery sparks,

When under curl and curl I pried

After the warmth and scent inside,

Through lights and darks how manifold—

The dark inspired, the light controlled,

As early art embrowns the gold.

ROBERT BROWNING.

Adorables frissons de l’amoureuse fièvre,

Ramiers qui descendez du ciel sur une lèvre,

  Baisers âcres et doux,

Chutes du dernier voile, et vous, cascades blondes,

Cheveux d’or inondant un dos brun de vos ondes,

  Quand vous connaîtrons-nous?

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.

She, as a veil down to the slender waist,

Her unadornèd golden tresses wore

Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,

As the vine curls her tendrils—which implied

Subjection, but required with gentle way,

And by her yielded, by him best received

Yielded, with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

JOHN MILTON.

Lament of Ahania

Where is my golden palace,

Where my ivory bed?

Where the joy of my morning hour?

Where the sons of eternity singing

To awake bright Urizen, my king,

To arise to the mountain sport,

To the bliss of eternal valleys;

To awake my king in the morn.

To embrace Ahania’s joy

On the breadth of his open bosom?

From my soft cloud of dew to fall

In showers of life on his harvests,

To the sons of eternal joy,

When he gave my happy soul

When he took the daughters of life

Into my chambers of love.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

A Rapture

I will enjoy thee now, my Celia, come

And fly with me to Love’s Elysium.

The giant Honour, that keeps cowards out,

Is but a masquer, and the servile rout

Of baser subjects only bend in vain

To the vast idol; whilst the nobler train

Of valiant lovers daily sail between

The huge Colossus’ legs, and pass unseen

Unto the blissful shore. Be bold and wise,

And we shall enter; the grim Swiss denies

  Only to fools a passage, that not know

  He is but form, and only frights in show.

Let duller eyes that look from far, draw near,

And they shall scorn what they were wont to fear.

We shall see how the stalking pageant goes

With borrowed legs, a heavy load to those

That made and bear him; not, as we once thought,

The seed of Gods, but a weak model, wrought

  By greedy men that seek to enclose the common

  And within private arms impale free woman.

Come, then, and mounted on the wings of love

We’ll cut the fleeting air, and soar above

The monster’s head, and in the noblest seat

Of those blest shades quench and renew our heat.

There shall the Queen of Love and Innocence,

Beauty and Nature, banish all offence

From our close ivy-twines; there I’ll behold

Thy barèd snow and thy unbraided gold;

There my enfranchised hand on every side

Shall o’er thy naked polished ivory slide.

No curtain there, though of transparent lawn.

Shall be before thy virgin treasure drawn;

But the rich mine, to the enquiring eye

Exposed, shall ready still for mintage lie,

And we will coin young Cupids. There a bed

Of roses and fresh myrtles shall be spread,

Under the cooler shade of cypress groves;

Our pillows of the down of Venus’ doves,

Whereon our panting limbs we’ll gently lay

In the faint respites of our amorous play;

That so our slumbers may in dreams have leisure

To tell the nimble fancy our past pleasure,

  And so our souls, that cannot be embraced,

  Shall the embraces of our bodies taste.

Meanwhile the babbling stream shall court the shore,

The enamoured chirping wood-choir shall adore

In varied tunes the deity of love;

The gentle blasts of western wind shall move

The trembling leaves, and through the close boughs breathe

Still music, while we rest ourselves beneath

Their dancing shade; till a soft murmur, sent

From souls entranced in amorous languishment,

  Rouse us and shoot into our veins fresh fire,

  Till we in their sweet ecstasy expire.

Then, as the empty bee that lately bore

Into the common treasure all her store,

Flies ’bout the painted field with nimble wing,

Deflowering the fresh virgins of the spring—

So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell

In thy delicious paradise, and swell

My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power

Of fervent kisses from each spicy flower.

I’ll seize the rose-buds in their perfumed bed,

The violet knots, like curious mazes spread

O’er all the garden; taste the ripened cherries,

The warm, firm apple, tipped with coral berries.

Then will I visit with a wandering kiss

The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss;

And where the beautious region doth divide

Into two milky ways, my lip shall slide

Down those smooth alleys, wearing as they go

A track for lovers on the printed snow;

Thence climbing o’er the swelling Apennine,

Retire into the grove of eglantine,

Where I will all those ravished sweets distil

Through Love’s alembic, and with chymic skill

  From the mixed mass one sovereign balm derive,

  Then bring the great elixir to thy hive.

THOMAS CAREW.

Dixerat et niveis hinc atque hinc diva lactertis

cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente

accepit solitam flammam, notusque medullas

intravit calor et labefacta per ossa cucurrit:

non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco

ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.

VIRGIL.

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,

And wander in the meadows, or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the heavens bend

With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;

Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,

Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea

Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,—

Possessing and possessed by all that is

Within that calm circumference of bliss,

And by each other, till to love and live

Be one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive

Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep

The moonlight of the expired night asleep,

Through which the awakened day can never peep;

A veil for our seclusion, close as night’s,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain

Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.

And we will talk, until thought’s melody

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die

In words, to live again in looks, which dart

With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,

Harmonizing silence without a sound.

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,

And our veins beat together; and our lips

With other eloquence than words eclipse

The soul that burns between them, and the wells

Which boil under our being’s inmost cells,

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be

Confused in Passion’s golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning sun.

We shall become the same, we shall be one

Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

¡Oh, cauterio suave!

¡Oh, regalada llaga!

¡Oh, mano blanda! ¡Oh, toque delicado,

Que a vida eterna sabe,

Y toda deuda paga!

Matando, muerte en vida la has trocado.

¡Oh, lámparas de fuego,

En cuyos resplandores

Las profundas cavernas del sentido,

Que estaba oscuro y ciego,

Con extraños primores

Calor y luz dan junto a su querido!

Dear soul be strong!

Mercy will come here long

And bring his bosom fraught with blessings,

Flowers of never fading graces.

To make immortal dressings

For worthy souls, whose wise embraces

Store up themselves for Him, who is alone

The spouse of virgins and the Virgin’s Son.

But if the noble Bridegroom, when He come,

Shall find the loitering heart from home;

Leaving her chaste abode

To gad abroad

Among the gay mates of the god of flies;

To take her pleasure, and to play,

And keep the devil’s holiday;

To dance i’ the sunshine of some smiling

But beguiling

Sphere of sweet and sugared lies;

Some slippery pair

Of false, perhaps as fair,

Flattering but forswearing eyes;

Doubtless some other heart

Will get the start

Meanwhile, and stepping in before

Will take possession of the sacred store

Of hidden sweets and holy joys;

Words which are not heard with ears

(Those tumultuous shops of noise),

Effectual whispers, whose still voice

The soul itself more feels than hears;

Amorous languishments, luminous trances;

Sights which are not seen with eyes;

Spiritual and soul-piercing glances,

Whose pure and subtle lightning flies

Home to the heart, and sets the house on fire

And melts it down in sweet desire:

Yet does not stay

To ask the windows’ leave to pass that way;

Delicious deaths, soft exhalations

Of soul; dear and divine annihilations;

A thousand unknown rites

Of joys and rarefied delights;

An hundred thousand goods, glories and graces;

And many a mystic thing,

Which the divine embraces

Of the dear Spouse of spirits with them will bring;

For which it is no shame

That dull mortality must not know a name.

Of all this store

Of blessings, and ten thousand more

(If when He come

He find the heart from home)

Doubtless He will unload

Himself some otherwhere,

And pour abroad

His precious sweets

On the fair soul whom first He meets,

O fair! O fortunate! O rich! O dear!

O happy and thrice-happy she,

Dear selected dove

Who’er she be,

Whose early love

With wingèd vows

Makes haste to meet her morning Spouse,

And close with his immortal kisses;

Happy indeed who never misses

To improve that precious hour,

And every day

Seize her sweet prey,

All fresh and fragrant as He rises,

Dropping with a balmy shower

A delicious dew of spices;

O let the blissful heart hold fast

Her heavenly armful; she shall taste

At once ten thousand paradises;

She shall have power

To rifle and deflower

The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,

Which with a swelling bosom there she meets:

Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures

Of pure inebriating pleasures.

Happy proof! she shall discover

What joy, what bliss,

How many heavens at once it is

To have her God become her lover.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

The moment of desire! the moment of desire! the virgin

That pines for man shall awaken her womb to enormous joys

In the secret shadows of her chamber: the youth shut up from

The lustful joy shall forget to generate and create an amorous image

In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow.

Are not these the places of religion, the rewards of continence,

The self-enjoyings of self-denial? Why dost thou seek religion?

Is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude,

Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire?

WILLIAM BLAKE.

Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas,

et tædet Veneris statim peractæ.

Non ergo ut pecudes libidinosæ

cæci protinus irruamus illuc;

nam languescit amor peritque flamma;

sed sic sic sine fine feriati

et tecum jaceamus osculantes.

Hic nullus labor est ruborque nullus:

hoc juvit, juvat et diu juvabit;

hoc non deficit, incipitque semper.

PETRONIUS ARBITER.

English Version

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

And done, we straight repent us of the sport:

Let us not then rush blindly on unto it;

Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

For lust will languish, and that heat decay.

But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

Let us together closely lie and kiss,

There is no labour, nor no shame in this;

This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never

Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

BEN JONSON.

Le soleil, sur le sable, ô lutteuse endormie,

En l’or de tes cheveux chauffe un bain langoureux

Et, consumant l’encens sur ta joue ennemie,

Il mêle avec les pleurs un breuvage amoureux.

De ce blanc Flamboiement l’immuable accalmie

T’a fait dire, attristée, ô mes baisers peureux,

“Nous ne serons jamais une seule momie

Sous l’antique désert et les palmiers heureux!”

Mais ta chevelure est une rivière tiède,

Ou noyer sans frissons l’âme qui nous obsède

Et trouver ce Néant que tu ne connais pas.

Je goûterai le fard pleuré par tes paupières,

Pour voir s’il sait donner au coeur que tu frappas

L’insensibilité de l’azur et des pierres.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

Morpheus in mentem

trahit impellentem

ventum lenem

segetes maturas,

murmura rivorum

per arenas puras,

circulares ambitus

molendinorum,

qui furantur somno

lumen oculorum.

Post blanda Veneris

commercia,

lassatur cerebri

substantia.

Hinc caligantes mira novitate

oculi nantes in palpebrarum rate,

hei quam felix transitus amoris ad soporem,

sed suavior regressus soporis ad amorem!

ANON., 12TH-13TH CENT.

The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil

Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps;

Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale

Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps.

Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,

Not daily labour’s dull, Lethean spring,

Oblivion in lost angels can infuse

Of the soiled glory and the trailing wing.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

“Nous ne serons jamais une seule momie

Sous l’antique désert et les palmiers heureux!”—

As in some countries far remote from hence,

The wretched creature destinèd to die,

Having the judgment due to his offence,

By surgeons begged, their art on him to try,

Which on the living work without remorse,

First make incision on each mastering vein,

Then staunch the bleeding, then transpierce the corse,

And with their balms recure the wounds again.

Then poison and with physic him restore;

Not that they fear the hopeless man to kill,

But their experience to increase the more:—

Even so my mistress works upon my ill,

  By curing me and killing me each hour.

  Only to show her beauty’s sovereign power.

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

Whoever loves, if he do not propose

The right true end of love, he’s one that goes

To sea for nothing but to make him sick:

Love is a bear-whelp born; if we o’er-lick

Our love and force it new strange shapes to take,

We err, and of a lump a monster make.

Were not a calf a monster that were grown

Faced like a man, though better than his own?

JOHN DONNE.

Answer to the Platonicks

So angels love; so let them love for me!

When I’m all soul, such shall my love too be.

Who nothing here but like a spirit would do

In a short time, believe ’t, will be one too.

But shall our love do what in beasts we see?

Even beasts eat too, but not so well as we;

And you as justly might in thirst refuse

The use of wine, because beasts water use.

They taste those pleasures as they do their food:

Undressed they take ’t, devour it raw and crude.

But to us men Love cooks it at his fire,

And adds the poignant sauce of sharp desire.

Beasts do the same, ’tis true; but ancient fame

Says gods themselves turned beasts to do the same.

The Thunderer who, without the female bed,

Could goddesses bring forth from out his head,

Chose rather mortals this way to create,

So much he esteemed his pleasure ’bove his state.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

’Tis the Arabian bird alone

Lives chaste, because there is but one.

But had kind nature made them two,

They would like doves and sparrows do.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.

    our general mother who, with eyes

Of conjugal attraction unreproved,

And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned

On our first father; half her swelling breast

Naked met his, under the flowing gold

Of her loose tresses hid. He, in delight

Both of her beauty and submissive charms,

Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds

That shed May flowers.

Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites

Mysterious of connubial love refused:

Whatever hypocrites austerely talk

Of purity, and place, and innocence.

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber should complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood;

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast;

But thirty thousand for the rest.

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, resound

My echoing song; there worms shall try

That long preserved virginity;

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

ANDREW MARVELL.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love,

  Whose soul is sense, cannot admit

Absence because it doth remove

  Those things that elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined,

  That ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assurèd of the mind,

  Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.

JOHN DONNE.

My love is of a birth as rare

As ’tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by despair

Upon impossibility.

Magnanimous despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown,

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive,

Where my extended soul is fixed;

But fate doth iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

Therefore the love which me doth bind,

But fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind

And opposition of the stars.

ANDREW MARVELL.

A single violet transplant,

  The strength, the colour and the size

(All which before was poor and scant)

  Redoubles still and multiplies.

When love with one another so

  Interinanimates two souls,

That abler soul, which thence doth flow,

  Defects of loneliness controls. . . .

But O, alas, so long, so far,

  Our bodies why do we forbear?

They’re ours, though we’re not they; we are

  The intelligences, they the sphere.

We owe them thanks because they thus

  Did us to us at first convey;

Yielded their forces, sense, to us,

  Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven’s influence works not so,

  But that it first imprints the air;

So soul into the soul may flow,

  Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget

  Spirits, as like souls as it can,

Because such fingers need to knit

  The subtle knot which makes us man:

So must pure lovers’ souls descend

  To affections and to faculties,

Which sense may reach and apprehend,

  Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so

  Weak men on love revealed may look;

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,

  But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover such as we

  Have heard this dialogue of one,

Let him still mark us, he shall see

  Small change when we’re to bodies gone.

JOHN DONNE.

Some that have deeper digged love’s mine than I,

Say where his centric happiness doth lie.

  I have loved, and got, and told;

But should I love, get, tell till I were old,

I should not find that hidden mystery.

  O ’tis imposture all!

And as no chymic yet th’ elixir got,

  But glorifies his pregnant pot,

  If by the way to him befall

Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,

So lovers dream a rich and long delight,

But get a winter-seeming summer’s night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honour and our day,

Shall we for this vain bubble’s shadow pay?

  Ends love in this, that any man

Can be as happy as I can, if he can

Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom’s play?

  That loving wretch that swears

’Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds,

  Which he in her angelic finds,

  Would swear as justly that he hears

In that day’s rude, hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres.

  Hope not for mind in women; at their best

  Sweetness and wit, they are but Mummy possesst.

JOHN DONNE.

Abstinence sows sand all over

The ruddy limbs, the flaming hair;

But Desire gratified

Plants fruits of life and beauty there.

In a wife I would desire

What in whores is always found—

The lineaments of gratified desire.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

The sacred lowe of weel-placed love,

  Luxuriously indulge it;

But never tempt th’ illicit rove,

Tho’ naething should divulge it:

I waive the quantum of the sin,

  The hazard of concealing;

But och! it hardens a’ within,

  And petrifies the feeling.

ROBERT BURNS.

But from the first ’twas Peter’s drift

  To be a kind of moral eunuch;

He touched the hem of Nature’s shift,

Felt faint—and never dared uplift

  The closest, all-concealing tunic.

She laughed the while, with an arch smile,

  And kissed him with a sister’s kiss,

And said—“My best Diogenes,

I love you well—but if you please,

  Tempt not again my deepest bliss.

’Tis you are cold—for I, not coy,

  Yield love for love, frank, warm and true;

And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy—

His errors prove it—knew my joy

  More, learned friend, than you.

Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,

  Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:—

So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a

Male prude like you, from what you now endure, a

  Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.”

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know

  Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;

  For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,

And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

  That with superfluous burden loads the day,

  And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

I never was attached to that great sect,

Whose doctrine is, that each one should select

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend

To cold oblivion, though it is the code

Of modern morals, and the beaten road

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread

Who travel to their home among the dead

By the broad highway of the world, and so

With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,

The dreariest and the longest journey go.

True love in this differs from gold and clay,

That to divide is not to take away.

Love is like understanding, that grows bright

Gazing on many truths; ’tis like the light,

Imagination! which from earth and sky,

And from the depths of human phantasy,

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills

The Universe with glorious beams, and kills

Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow

Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow

The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,

The life that wears, the spirit that creates

One object, and one form, and builds thereby

A sepulchre for its eternity.

Mind from its object differs most in this;

Evil from good; misery from happiness;

The baser from the nobler; the impure

And frail, from what is clear and must endure.

If you divide suffering and dross, you may

Diminish till it is consumed away;

If you divide pleasure and love and thought,

Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not

How much, while any yet remains unshared,

Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:

This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw

The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law

By which those live, to whom this world of life

Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife

Tills for the promise of a later birth

The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Can that be love that drinks another as a sponge drinks water,

That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weeping all the day,

To spin a web of age around him, grey and hoary, dark,

Till his eyes sicken at the fruit that hangs before his sight?

Such is self-love that envies all, a creeping skeleton

With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed.

But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,

And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold.

I’ll lie beside thee on a bank and view their wanton play

In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss, with Theotormon:

Red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first-born beam,

Oothoon shall view his dear delight, nor e’er with jealous cloud

Come in the heaven of generous love, nor selfish blightings bring.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

In Liberty’s defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.)

If God had laid all common, certainly

  Man would have been th’ incloser; but since now

God hath impaled us, on the contrary

  Man breaks the fence and every ground will plough.

GEORGE HERBERT.

In the first ruder age, when love was wild,

Nor yet by laws reclaimed, nor reconciled

To order, nor by reason manned, but flew

Full-summed by nature, on the instant view,

Upon the wings of appetite, at all

The eye could fair or sense delightful call;

Election was not yet; but as their cheap

Food from the oak or the next acorn-heap,

As water from the nearest spring or brook,

So men their undistinguished females took

By chance, not choice. But soon the heavenly spark,

That in man’s bosom lurked, broke through the dark

Confusion: then the noblest heart first felt

Itself for its own proper object melt.

THOMAS CAREW.

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear;

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays;

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of later days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight;

  Therefore, like her, I sometimes hold my tongue,

  Because I would not dull you with my song.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed

Never to be disquieted!

My last good night! Thou wilt not wake

Till I thy fate shall overtake;

Till age, or grief, or sickness must

Marry my body to that dust

It so much loves, and fill the room

My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.

Stay for me there; I will not fail

To meet thee in that hollow vale;

And think not much of my delay;

I am already on the way,

And follow thee with all the speed

Desire can make, or sorrows breed.

HENRY KING.

Out of the chambre hath every wight him dressed.

And Januarie hath faste in armes take

His fresshe May, his paradys, his make.

He lulleth her, he kisseth her ful ofte

With thikke bristles of his berd unsofte,

Like to the skin of houndfish, sharp as brere,

For he was shave al newe in his manere. . . .

Thus laboureth he til that the day gan dawe;

And then he taketh a sop in fyn clarree,

And upright in his bed then sitteth he,

And after that he sang ful loude and clere,

And kiste his wyf, and made wantoun chere.

He was al coltish, ful of ragerye,

And ful of jargon as a flekked pye.

The slakke skin about his nekke shaketh,

Whyl that he sang, so chaunteth he and craketh.

But god wot what that May thoughte in her herte,

When she him saw up sittinge in his sherte,

In his night-cappe and with his nekke lene;

She preyseth not his pleying worth a bene.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

  Why should a foolish marriage vow,

    Which long ago was made,

  Oblige us to each other now,

    When passion is decayed?

We loved and we loved, as long as we could,

Till our love was loved out of us both;

But our marriage is dead, now the pleasures are fled;

  ’Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

  If I have pleasures for a friend

    And further love in store,

  What wrong has he, whose joys did end,

    And who could give no more?

’Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,

  Or that I should bar him of another.

For all we can gain is to give ourselves pain,

  When neither can hinder the other.

JOHN DRYDEN.

And what is Love? It is a doll, dressed up

For idleness to cosset, nurse and dandle;

A thing of soft misnomers, so divine

That silly youth doth think to make itself

Divine by loving, and so goes on

Yawning and doting a whole summer long,

Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,

And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;

Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,

And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.

Fools! if some passions high have warmed the world,

If Queens and Soldiers have played deep for hearts,

It is no reason why such agonies

Should be more common than the growth of weeds.

Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl

The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say

That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

JOHN KEATS.

Age is deformèd, youth unkind;

We scorn their bodies, they our mind.

THOMAS BASTARD.

Beauty is but a flower,

Which wrinkles will devour;

Brightness falls from the air;

Queens have died young, and fair;

Dust hath closed Helen’s eye;

I am sick, I must die.

    Lord have mercy on us!

Strength stoops unto the grave;

Worms feed on Hector brave;

Swords may not fight with fate;

Earth still holds ope her gate.

Come, come, the bells do cry;

I am sick, I must die.

    Lord have mercy on us!

Wit with his wantonness

Tasteth death’s bitterness;

Hell’s executioner

Hath no ears for to hear

What vain art can reply;

I am sick, I must die;

    Lord have mercy on us!

Haste therefore each degree

To welcome destiny:

Heaven is our heritage,

Earth but a player’s stage.

Mount we unto the sky;

I am sick, I must die.

    Lord have mercy on us!

THOMAS NASHE.

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;

List to the heavy part the music bears,

  Woe weeps out her division when she sings.

    Droop herbs and flowers,

    Fall grief in showers,

    Our beauties are not ours;

      O, I could still

Like melting snow upon some craggy hill.

      Drop, drop, drop, drop,

Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil.

BEN JONSON.

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore;

So fair a summer look for never more;

All good things vanish less than in a day,

Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay.

  Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year,

  The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear.

THOMAS NASHE.

There was a time when, though my path was rough,

  This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

  Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,

And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth,

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

What is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,

The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forgo her wreath?

—Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength—

Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not

Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be.

’Tis not to have our life

Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,

A golden day’s decline.

’Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,

And heart profoundly stirred;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,

The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young;

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month

To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.

Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,

But no emotion—none.

It is—last stage of all—

When we are frozen up within, and quite

The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blamed the living man.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

So may’st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop

Into thy mother’s lap, or be with ease

Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature.

This is old age; but then thou must outlive

Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change

To withered, weak and grey; thy senses then,

Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo

To what thou hast; and, for the air of youth,

Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign

A melancholy damp of cold and dry

To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume

Thy balm of life.

JOHN MILTON.

Ange plein de gaîté, connaissez-vous l’angoisse?

La honte, le remords, les sanglots, les ennuis

Et les vagues terreurs de ces affreuses nuits

Qui compriment le cœur comme un papier qu’on froisse?

Ange plein de gaîté, connaissez-vous l’angoisse? . . .

Ange plein de santé, connaissez-vous les Fièvres?

Qui, le long des grands murs de l’hospice blafard,

Comme des exilés, s’en vont d’un pied trainard,

Cherchant le soleil rare et remuant les lèvres?

Ange plein de santé, connaissez-vous les Fièvres?

Ange plein de beauté, connaissez-vous les rides,

Et la peur de vieillir, et ce hideux tourment

De lire la secrète horreur du devoûment

Dans des yeux où longtemps burent nos yeux avides?

Ange plein de beauté, connaissez-vous les rides? . . .

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth,

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,

Ange, plein de beauté, connaissez-vous les rides,

Et la peur de vieillir, et ce hideux tourment

De lire la secrète horreur du devoûment

Dans des yeux où longtemps burent nos yeux avides?

                  O thrice blest they

That ere they pass to Hades have beheld

These Mysteries; for them only, in that world,

Is life; the rest have utter misery.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world which seems

To lie before us, like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here, as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Uxor, vivamus ut viximus, et teneamus

  nomina quae primo sumpsimus in thalamo;

nec ferat ulla dies, ut commutemur in aevo,

  quin tibi sim juvenis tuque puella mihi.

AUSONIUS.

Tâche donc, instrument des fuites, ô maligne

Syrinx, de refleurir aux lacs où tu m’attends!

Moi, de ma rumeur fier, je vais parler longtemps

Des déesses; et par d’idolâtres peintures,

A leur ombre enlever encore des ceintures:

Ainsi, quand des raisins j’ai sucé la clarté

Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte écarté,

Rieur, j’élève au ciel d’été la grappe vide

Et, soufflant dans ses peaux lumineuses, avide

D’ivresse, jusqu’au soir je regarde au travers.

O nymphes, regonflons des souvenirs divers.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

Ah, sad and strange, as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love and wild with all regrets;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

There was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs

And islands of Winander! many a time

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands,

Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And when there came a pause

Of silence such as baffled his best skill:

Then sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received

Into the bosom of the steady lake.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

O litus vita mihi dulcius, O mare! felix cui licet ad terras ire subinde meas!

O formosa dies! hoc quondam rure solebam Naiadas alterna sollicitare manu!

Hic fontis lacus est, illic sinus egerit algas; haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus.

Pervixi: neque enim fortuna malignior unquam eripiet nobis quod prior hora dedit.

PETRONIUS ARBITER.

I have lived; nor shall maligner fortune ever

Take from me what an earlier hour once gave.

Ed ella a me: “Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria: e ciò sa il tuo dottore.”

Tired Memory

The stony rock of death’s insensibility

Welled yet awhile with honey of thy love

And then was dry;

Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove,

Nor all thy kind long letters, nor the band

Which really spanned

Thy body chaste and warm,

Thenceforward move

Upon the stony rock their wearied charm.

At last, then, thou wast dead.

Yet would I not despair,

But wrought my daily task, and daily said

Many and many a fond, unfeeling prayer,

To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm.

In vain.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

O England, full of sin, but most of sloth!

Spit out thy phlegm and fill thy breast with glory.

Thy gentry bleats, as if thy native cloth

Transfused a sheepishness into thy story;

  Not that they all are so, but that the most

  Are gone to grass and in the pasture lost.

GEORGE HERBERT.

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began

That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman:

In eager rapes and furious lust begot

Between a painted Briton and a Scot;

Whose gendering offspring quickly learnt to bow

And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough;

From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,

With neither name nor nation, speech or fame;

In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,

Infused between a Saxon and a Dane;

While their rank daughters, to their parents just,

Received all nations with promiscuous lust.

This nauseous brood directly did contain

The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.

DANIEL DEFOE.

The royal refugee our breed restores

With foreign courtiers and with foreign whores,

And carefully repeoples us again,

Throughout the lazy, long, lascivious reign,

With such a blest and true-born English fry

As much illustrates our nobility. . . .

Six bastard dukes survive his luscious reign,

The labours of Italian Castlemaine,

French Portsmouth, Tabby Scot and Cambrian.

We have offended, Oh my countrymen,

We have offended very grievously,

And been most tyrannous. From East to West

A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!

The wretched plead against us; multitudes

Countless and vehement, the sons of God,

Our brethren. Like a cloud that travels on,

Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,

Even so, my countrymen, have we gone forth

And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,

And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint,

With slow perdition murders the whole man,

His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,

All individual dignity and power

Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,

Associations and Societies,

A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,

One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,

We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,

Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire.

And when, at eight years old, Lob-lie-by-the-fire

Came in my books, this was the man I saw.

He has been in England as long as dove and daw,

Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,

The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery;

And in a tender mood he, as I guess,

Christened one flower Love-in-Idleness;

And, while he walked from Exeter to Leeds

One April, called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.

For reasons of his own, to him the wren

Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men

’Twas he first called the Hog’s Back the Hog’s Back.

That Mother Dunch’s Buttocks should not lack

Their name was his care. He too could explain

Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler’s Lane;

He knows if any one. Why Tumbling Bay

Inland in Kent is called so he might say.

EDWARD THOMAS.

The first and riper world of men and skill

Yields to our later world for three inventions;

Miraculously we write, we sail, we kill,

As neither ancient scroll nor story mentions.

The first hath opened learnings old concealed

And obscure arts restorèd to the light;

The second hidden countries hath revealed,

And sent Christ’s Gospel to each living wight.

These we commend; but oh, what needeth more,

To teach Death more skill than he had before!

THOMAS BASTARD.

                Boys and girls,

And women, that would groan to see a child

Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,

The best amusement for our morning meal!

The poor wretch who has learned his only prayers

From curses, who knows scarcely words enough

To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,

Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute

And technical in victories and defeats,

And all our dainty terms for fratricide;

Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues

Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which

We join no meaning and attach no form!

As if the soldier died without a wound:

As if the fibres of this godlike frame

Were gored without a pang: as if the wretch

Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,

Passed off to Heaven translated and not killed;

As though he had no wife to pine for him,

No God to judge him.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Plain-pathed experience the unlearnèd’s guide,

Her simple followers evidently shows

Sometimes what schoolmen scarcely can decide,

Nor yet wise reason absolutely knows;

In making trial of a murder wrought,

If the vile actors of the heinous deed

Near the dead body happily be brought,

Oft ’t hath been proved, the breathless corse will bleed.

She coming near, that my poor heart hath slain,

Long since departed, to the world no more,

The ancient wounds no longer can contain,

But fall to bleeding, as they did before.

  But what of this? Should she to death be led,

  It furthers justice, but helps not the dead.

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

Sonnet written in disgust of vulgar superstition.

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.

Surely the mind of man is closely bound

In some black spell; seeing that each one tears

Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,

And converse high of those with glory crowned.

Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,—

A chill as from a tomb, did I not know

That they are dying like an outburnt lamp:

That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go

Into oblivion;—that fresh flowers will grow

And many glories of immortal stamp.

JOHN KEATS.

Vraiment c’est bête, ces églises de villages,

Où quinze laids marmots encrassant les piliers,

Ecoutent, grasseyant les divins babillages,

Un noir grotesque dont fermentent les souliers;

Mais le soleil éveille, à travers les feuillages,

Les vieilles couleurs des vitraux ensoleillés.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

As I sat in the café I said to myself,

They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,

They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,

But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking,

    How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    How pleasant it is to have money.

I sit at my table en grand seigneur.

And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor;

Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good living,

But also the pleasure of now and then giving.

    So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    So pleasant it is to have money.

I drive through the streets, and I care not a damn;

The people they stare, and they ask who I am;

And if I should chance to run over a cad,

I can pay for the damage, if ever so bad.

    So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    So pleasant it is to have money.

We stroll to our box and look down on the pit,

And if it weren’t low should be tempted to spit;

We loll and we talk until people look up,

And when it’s half over, we go out to sup.

    So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    So pleasant it is to have money.

The best of the tables and the best of the fare—

And as for the others, the devil may care:

It isn’t our fault if they dare not afford

To sup like a prince and be drunk as a lord.

    So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    So pleasant it is to have money.

They may talk as they please about what they call pelf

And how one ought never to think of one’s self,

And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking:—

My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking

    How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

    How pleasant it is to have money.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

I have been in love, and in debt, and in drink,

  This many and many a year;

And those three are plagues enough, one would think,

  For one poor mortal to bear.

’Twas drink made me fall into love,

  And love made me run into debt;

And though I have struggled, and struggled, and strove,

  I cannot get out of them yet.

There’s nothing but money can cure me,

  And rid me of all my pain;

    ’Twill pay all my debts

    And remove all my lets;

And my mistress that cannot endure me,

    Will love me, and love me again:

Then I’ll fall to loving and drinking again.

ALEXANDER BROME.

Oft have I sung of Love and of his fire;

But now I find that poet was advised,

Which made full feasts increasers of desire,

And proves weak Love was with the poor despised,

For when the life with food is not sufficed,

    What thoughts of love, what motion of delight,

    What pleasure can proceed from such a wight.

ROBERT GREENE.

. . . that which makes our life delightful prove

Is a genteel sufficiency, and love—

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

  Enrichèd from ancestral merchandize,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt

  In torchèd mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quivered loins did melt

  In blood from stinging whip; with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood,

  To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

  And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death

  The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

  A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel,

  That set sharp racks to work to pinch and peel.

JOHN KEATS.

What is Freedom?—ye can tell

That which slavery is, too well—

For its very name has grown

To an echo of your own.

’Tis to work and have such pay

As just keeps life from day to day

In your limbs, as in a cell

For the tyrant’s use to dwell.

So that ye for them are made

Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,

With or without your own will bent

To their defence and nourishment.

’Tis to see your children weak

With their mothers pine and peak,

When the winter winds are bleak—

They are dying, whilst I speak.

’Tis to hunger for such diet

As the rich man in his riot

Casts to the fat dogs that lie

Surfeiting beneath his eye.

’Tis to be a slave in soul

And to hold no strong control

Over your own wills, but be

All that others make of ye.

And at length, when ye complain

With a murmur weak and vain,

’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew

Ride over your wives and you—

Blood is on the grass like dew.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

(From the epilogue to “Tartufe.” Spoken by Tartufe.)

Zeal stands but sentry at the gate of sin,

Whilst all that have the word pass freely in:

Silent and in the dark, for fear of spies,

We march, and take Damnation by surprise;

There’s not a roaring blade in all this town

Can go so far towards Hell for half-a-crown

As I for sixpence, for I know the way.

CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET.

Le Châtiment de Tartufe

Tisonnant, tisonnant son cœur amoureux sous

Sa chaste robe noire, heureux, la main gantée,

Un jour qu’il s’en allait effroyablement doux,

Jaune, bavant la foi de sa bouche édentée,

Un jour qu’il s’en allait—“Oremus”—un méchant

Le prit rudement par son oreille benoîte

Et lui jeta des mots affreux, en arrachant

Sa chaste robe noire autour de sa peau moite.

Châtiment! Ses habits étaient déboutonnés,

Et, le long chapelet des péchés pardonnés

S’égrenant dans son cœur, saint Tartufe était pâle.

Donc, il se confessait, priait, avec un râle.

L’homme se contenta d’emporter ses rabats.

—Peuh! Tartufe était nu du haut jusques en bas.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Go, soul, the body’s guest

  Upon a thankless arrant;

Fear not to touch the best,

  The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

Say to the Court, it glows

  And shines like rotten wood;

Say to the Church, it shows

  What’s good and doth no good:

If Church and Court reply,

Then give them both the lie.

Tell men of high condition,

  That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

  Their practice only hate:

And if they once reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion,

  Tell love it is but lust,

Tell time it is but motion,

  Tell flesh it is but dust:

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

  Commanded thee, done blabbing,

Although to give the lie

  Deserves no less than stabbing,

Stab at thee he that will;

No stab the soul can kill.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

Ay, ay, good man, kind father, best of friends—

These are the words that grow, like grass and nettles,

Out of dead men, and speckled hatreds hide,

Like toads among them.

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey;

But savage man alone does man betray.

Pressed by necessity, they kill for food;

Man undoes man to do himself no good.

With teeth and claws by nature armed, they hunt

Nature’s allowance, to supply their want;

But man with smiles, embraces, friendships, praise,

Unhumanly his fellow’s life betrays,

With voluntary pains works his distress,

Not through necessity, but wantonness.

For hunger or for love they bite or tear,

Whilst wretched man is still in arms for fear;

For fear he arms, and is of arms afraid,

From fear to fear successively betrayed.

Base fear, the source whence his best passion came,

His boasted honour and his dear-bought fame;

That lust of power, to which he’s such a slave,

And for the which alone he dares be brave;

To which his various projects are designed,

Which make him generous, affable and kind.

Look to the bottom of his vast design,

Wherein man’s wisdom, power and glory join,

The good he acts, the ill he does endure,

’Tis all for fear, to make himself secure.

Merely for safety after fame we thirst,

For all men would be cowards if they durst.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.

My life is measured by this glass, this glass

By all those little sands that thorough pass.

See how they press, see how they strive, which shall

With greatest speed and greatest quickness fall.

See how they raise a little mount, and then

With their own weight do level it again.

But when they have all got thorough, they give o’er

Their nimble sliding down and move no more.

Just such is man, whose hours still forward run,

Being almost finished ere they are begun;

So perfect nothings, such light blasts are we,

That ere we are aught at all, we cease to be.

Do what we will, our hasty minutes fly,

And while we sleep, what do we else but die?

How transient are our joys, how short their day!

They creep on towards us, but fly away.

How stinging are our sorrows! where they gain

But the least footing, there they will remain.

How groundless are our hopes, how they deceive

Our childish thoughts, and only sorrow leave!

How real are our fears! they blast us still,

Still rend us, still with gnawing passions fill.

How senseless are our wishes, yet how great!

With what toil we pursue them, with what sweat!

Yet most times for our hurts, so small we see,

Like children crying for some mercury. . . .

Poor man, what art? A tennis ball of error,

A ship of glass tossed in a sea of terror,

Issuing in blood and sorrow from the womb,

Crawling in tears and mourning to the tomb;

How slippery are thy paths, how sure thy fall,

How art thou nothing, when thou art most of all!

JOHN HALL.

                        Let him lean

Against his life, that glassy interval

’Twixt us and nothing; and, upon the ground

Of his own slippery breath, draw hueless dreams,

And gaze on frost-work hopes. Uncourteous Death

Knuckles the pane and . . .

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

What poor astronomers are they

  Take women’s eyes for stars!

And set their thoughts in battle ’ray

  To fight such idle wars;

When in the end they shall approve

’Tis but a jest drawn out of love.

And love itself is but a jest

  Devised by idle heads,

To catch young fancies in the nest

  And lay them in fools’ beds;

That being hatched in beauty’s eyes,

They may be fledged ere they be wise.

But yet it is a sport to see

  How wit will run on wheels;

While will cannot persuaded be

  With that which Reason feels,

That women’s eyes and stars are odd

And love is but a feignèd god.

But such as will run mad with will

  I cannot clear their sight,

But leave them to their study still

  To look where is no light;

Till—time too late—we make them try,

They study false astronomy.

ANON.

Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass

  Most merrily, I’ll be sworn;

For many an honest Indian ass

  Goes for an Unicorn.

      Farra diddle dino,

      This is idle fino.

Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight!

  He tickles this age that can

Call Tullia’s ape a marmosite

  And Leda’s goose a swan.

      Farra diddle dino,

      This is idle fino.

So so! so so! fine English days!

  When false play’s no reproach;

For he that doth the coachman praise

  May safely use the coach.

      Farra diddle dino,

      This is idle fino.

ANON.

He that marries a merry lass,

  He has most cause to be sad:

For let her go free in her merry tricks,

  She’ll work his patience mad.

But he that marries a scold, a scold,

He hath most cause to be merry;

  For when she’s in her fits

  He may cherish his wits

With singing, hey down derry!

He that weds a roaring girl

That will both scratch and fight,

  Though he study all day

  To make her away,

Will be glad to please her at night.

And he that copes with a sullen wench,

That scarce will speak at all,

  Her doggedness more

  Than a scold or a whore

Will penetrate his gall.

But he that’s matched with a turtle dove

That hath no spleen about her

  Shall waste so much life

  In love of his wife,

He had better be without her.

ANON.

He tickles this age that can

Call Tullia’s ape a marmosite

And Leda’s goose a swan;

To catch young fancies in the nest

And lay them in fool’s beds.

To be a whore despite of grace,

Good council and an ugly face,

And to distribute still the pox

  To men of wit

Will seem a kind of paradox;

  And yet

Thou art a whore, despite of grace,

Good council and an ugly face.

CHARLES COTTON.

When Orpheus went down to the regions below,

  Which men are forbidden to see,

He tuned up his lyre, as old histories show,

  To set his Eurydice free.

All hell was astonished a person so wise

  Should rashly endanger his life

And venture so far—but how vast their surprise,

  When they heard that he came for his wife!

To find out a punishment due to the fault

  Old Pluto had puzzled his brain;

But hell had no torment sufficient, he thought—

  So he gave him his wife back again.

But pity succeeding found place in his heart

  And, pleased with his playing so well,

He took her again in reward of his art—

  Such merit had music in hell.

SAMUEL LISLE.

Lot and his Daughters

  Il but,

Il devint tendre;

Et puis il fut

  Son gendre.

ANON.

Opening lines of two poems on the death of Edward King

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. . . .

  I like not tears in tune, nor do I prize

  His artificial grief, who scans his eyes.

  Mine weep down pious beads; but why should I

  Confine them to the muses’ rosary?

  I am no poet here; my pen’s the spout

  Where the rain-water of mine eyes runs out

  In pity of that name, whose fall we see

  Thus copied out in grief’s hydrography. . . .

Why does my she-advowson fly

  Incumbency?

Inscription on the tomb of Lady Mary Wentworth

And here the precious dust is laid,

Whose purely tempered clay was made

So fine, that it the guest betrayed.

Else, the soul grew so fast within,

It broke the outward shell of sin,

And so was hatched a Cherubin.

In height it soared to God above,

In depth it did to knowledge move,

And spread in breadth to general love.

Good to the poor, to kindred dear,

To servants kind, to friendship clear,

To nothing but herself severe.

So, though a virgin, yet a bride

To every grace, she justified

A chaste polygamy, and died.

Learn from hence, reader, what small trust

We owe the world, where virtue must,

Frail as our flesh, crumble to dust.

THOMAS CAREW.

So, though a virgin, yet a bride

To every grace, she justified

A chaste polygamy, and died.

Evening

The shadows now so long do grow

That brambles like tall cedars show;

Molehills seem mountains, and the ant

Appears a monstrous elephant.

A very little, little flock

Shades thrice the ground that it would stock,

Whilst the small stripling following them

Appears a mighty Polypheme.

CHARLES COTTON.

The Grasshopper: to Charles Cotton

O thou that swing’st upon the waving hair

  Of some well-filled oaten beard,

Drunk every night with a delicious tear

  Dropt thee from heaven, where thou wert reared!

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,

  That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;

And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire

  To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcomest then,

  Sport’st in the gilt plaits of his beams,

And all these merry days mak’st merry men,

  Thyself, and melancholy streams.

But, ah, the sickle! golden ears are cropped;

  Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;

Sharp frosty fingers all your flowers have topped,

  And what scythes spared, winds shave off quite.

Poor verdant fool, and now green ice! thy joys,

  Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,

Bid us lay in ’gainst winter rain, and poise

  Their floods with an o’erflowing glass.

Thou best of men and friends! we will create

  A genuine summer in each other’s breast,

And spite of this cold time and frozen fate,

  Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.

RICHARD LOVELACE.

But now the salmon fishers moist

Their leathern boats begin to hoist

And, like antipodes in shoes,

Have shod their heads with their canoes.

How tortoise-like, but not so slow,

These rational amphibii go!

Let’s in; for the dark hemisphere

Does now like one of them appear.

ANDREW MARVELL.

Why should, of all things, man unruled

Such unproportioned dwellings build?

The beasts are by their dens expressed,

And birds contrive an equal nest;

The low-roofed tortoises do dwell

In cases fit of tortoise-shell:

No creature loves an empty space;

Their bodies measure out their place.

But he, superfluously spread,

Demands more room alive than dead

And in his hollow palace goes,

Where winds, as he, themselves may lose.

What need of all this marble crust

T’ impark the wanton mote of dust?

ANDREW MARVELL.

  Hope, whose weak being ruined is,

Alike if it succeed and if it miss;

Whom good or ill does equally confound,

And both the horns of Fate’s dilemma wound.

  Vain shadow, which does vanish quite

  Both at full moon and perfect night!

The stars have not a possibility

  Of blessing thee;

If things then from their end we happy call,

’Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

  Hope, thou bold taster of delight,

Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour’st it quite!

Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor

By clogging it with legacies before.

  The joys which we entire should wed

  Come deflowered virgins to our bed;

Good fortunes without gain imported be,

  Such mighty custom’s paid to thee.

For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;

If it take air before, its spirits waste.

  Hope, fortune’s cheating lottery,

Where for one prize a hundred blanks there be!

Fond archer, Hope, who tak’st thy aim so far,

That still or short or wide thine arrows are!

  Thin, empty cloud, which the eye deceives

With shapes that our own fancy gives!

A cloud which gilt and painted now appears,

  But must drop presently in tears!

When thy false beams o’er reason’s light prevail,

By ignes fatui for North Stars we sail.

Brother of fear, more gaily clad!

The merrier fool o’ the two, yet quite as mad!

Sire of repentance, child of fond desire,

That blow’st the Chymic’s and the Lover’s fire!

  Leading them still insensibly on

  By the strange witchcraft of Anon!

By thee the one does changing Nature through

Her endless labyrinths pursue,

And the other chases woman, whilst she goes

More ways and turns than hunted Nature knows.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

Upon Nothing

Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,

Thou hadst a being ere the world was made

And, well fixed, art of ending not afraid.

Ere time and place were, time and place were not,

When primitive nothing something straight begot;

Then all proceeded from the great united “what?”

Something, the general attribute of all,

Severed from thee, its sole original,

Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall.

Yet something did thy mighty power command,

And from thy fruitful emptiness’s hand

Snatch men, beasts, birds, fire, water, air and land. . . .

But, nothing, why does something still permit

That sacred monarchs should at council sit

With persons highly thought, at best for nothing fit?

While weighty something modestly abstains

From prince’s coffers and from statesmen’s brains,

And nothing there like stately nothing reigns.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.

Go, Mary, to the summer house

And sweep the wooden floor,

And light the little fire, and wash

The pretty varnished door;

For there the London gentleman,

Who lately lectured here,

Will smoke a pipe with Jonathan,

And taste our home-brewed beer.

Go bind the dahlias, that our guest

May praise their fading dyes;

But strip of every fading bloom

The flower that won the prize!

And take thy father’s knife, and prune

The roses that remain,

And let the fallen hollyhock

Peep through the broken pane.

I’ll follow in an hour or two;

Be sure I will not fail

To bring his flute and spying glass,

The pipes and bottled ale;

And that grand music that he made

About the child in bliss,

Our guest shall hear it sung and played,

And feel how grand it is!

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

Ce qui fait que l’ancien bandagiste renie

Le comptoir dont le faste alléchait les passants,

C’est son jardin d’Auteuil où, veufs de tout encens,

Les zinnias out l’air d’être en tôle vernie.

C’est là qu’il vient le soir, goûter l’air aromal

Et, dans sa rocking chair, en veston de flanelle,

Aspirer les senteurs qu’épanchent sur Grenelle

Les fabriques de suif et de noir animal.

Bien que libre-penseur et franc-maçon, il juge

Le dieu propice qui lui donna ce refuge

Où se meurt un cyprin emmy la pièce d’eau,

Où, dans la tour mauresque aux lanternes chinoises,

—Tout en lui préparant du sirop de framboises,—

Sa “demoiselle” chante un couplet de Nadaud.

And Betty’s husband’s at the wood,

Where by the week he doth abide,

A woodman in the distant vale:—

Depuis huit jours, j’avais dechiré mes bottines

Aux cailloux des chemins; j’entrais à Charleroi.

Au Cabaret Vert je demandais des tartines

De beurre et du jambon qui fût a moitié froid.

Bienheureux j’allongeais les jambes sous la table

Verte; je contemplais les sujets très naïfs

De la tapisserie. Et ce fut adorable,

Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,

—Celle-là, ce n’est pas un baiser qui l’épeure!—

Rieuse, m’apporta des tartines de beurre,

Du jambon tiède dans un plat colorié.

Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d’une gousse

D’ail et m’emplit la chope immense avec sa mousse

Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Poor Susan moans, poor Susan groans;

The clock gives warning for eleven;

’Tis on the stroke—“He must be near,”

Quoth Betty, “and will soon be here,

As sure as there’s a moon in heaven.”

The clock is on the stroke of twelve,

And Johnny is not yet in sight:

The Moon’s in heaven, as Betty sees,

But Betty is not quite at ease;

And Susan has a dreadful night.

Two Sisters

I

Alice is tall and upright as a pine,

White as blanched almonds or the falling snow,

Sweet as are damask roses when they blow,

And doubtless fruitful as the swelling vine.

Ripe to be cut and ready to be pressed,

Her full-cheeked beauties very well appear,

And a year’s fruit she loses every year,

Wanting a man to improve her to the best.

Full fain she would be husbanded, and yet,

Alas, she cannot a fit labourer get

To cultivate her to his own content:

Fain would she be, God wot, about her task,

And yet, forsooth, she is too proud to ask,

And (which is worse) too modest to consent.

II

Margaret of humbler stature by the head

Is (as it oft falls out with yellow hair)

Than her fair sister, yet so much more fair

As her pure white is better mixt with red.

This, hotter than the other ten to one,

Longs to be put unto her mother’s trade,

And loud proclaims she lives too long a maid,

Wishing for one to untie her virgin zone.

She finds virginity a kind of ware

That’s very, very troublesome to bear,

And being gone she thinks will ne’er be missed;

And yet withal the girl has so much grace,

To call for help I know she wants the face,

Though, asked, I know not how she would resist.

CHARLES COTTON.

Some people hang portraits up

In a room where they dine or sup:

And the wife clinks tea-things under,

And her cousin, he stirs his cup,

Asks, “who was the lady, I wonder?”

“ ’Tis a daub John bought at a sale.”

Quoth the wife—looks black as thunder:

“What a shade beneath her nose!

Snuff-taking I suppose,”

Adds the cousin, while John’s corns ail.

Or else there’s no wife in the case,

But the portrait’s Queen of the place,

Alone ’mid the other spoils

Of youth—masks, gloves and foils,

And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine,

And the long whip, the tandem-lasher,

And the cast of a fist (“not alas mine,

But my master’s, the Tipton Slasher”)

And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace,

And a satin shoe used for cigar-case,

And the chamois horns (“shot in the Chablais”)

And prints—Rarey drumming on Cruiser,

And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser,

And the little edition of Rabelais:

Where a friend with both hands in his pockets,

May saunter up close to examine it,

And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it,

“But the eyes are half out of their sockets:

That hair’s not so bad, where the gloss is,

But they’ve made the girl’s nose a proboscis:

Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy!

What, isn’t she Jane? Then, who is she?”

All that I own is a print,

An etching, a mezzotint;

’Tis a study, a fancy, a fiction,

Yet a fact (take my conviction)

Because it has more than a hint

Of a certain face, I never

Saw elsewhere touch or trace of

In women I’ve seen the face of:

Just an etching, and, so far, clever.

I keep my prints, an imbroglio,

Fifty in one portfolio.

When somebody tries my claret,

We turn round chairs to the fire,

Chirp over days in a garret,

Chuckle o’er increase in salary,

Taste the good fruits of our leisure,

Talk about pencil and lyre,

And the National Portrait Gallery:

Then I exhibit my treasure.

After we’ve turned over twenty,

And the debt of wonder my crony owes

Is paid to my Marc Antonios,

He stops me—“Festina lente!

What’s that sweet thing there, the etching?”

How my waistcoat strings want stretching,

How my cheeks grow red as tomatoes,

How my heart leaps! But hearts, after leaps, ache.

“By the by, you must take, for a keepsake,

That other, you praised, of Volpato’s.”

The fool! Would he try a flight further and say—

He never saw, never before to-day,

What was able to take his breath away,

A face to lose youth for, to occupy age

With the dream of, meet death with,—why, I’ll not engage

But that, half in a rapture and half in a rage,

I should toss him the thing’s self—“ ’Tis only a duplicate,

A thing of no value! Take it, I supplicate!”

ROBERT BROWNING.

What is he buzzing in my ears?

  “Now that I come to die,

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”

  Ah reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again

  Where the physic bottles stand

On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,

  With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,

  From a house you could descry

O’er the garden wall: is the curtain blue

  Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather

  Blue above lane and wall:

And that furthest bottle labelled “Ether”

  Is the house o’ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,

  There watched for me, one June,

A girl: I know, sir, it’s improper,

  My poor mind’s out of tune.

Only, there was a way . . . you crept

  Close by the side, to dodge

Eyes in the house, two eyes except:

  They styled their house “The Lodge.”

What right had a lounger up their lane?

  But, by creeping very close,

With the good wall’s help, their eyes might strain

  And stretch themselves to Oos,

Yet never catch her and me together,

  As she left the attic, there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled “Ether,”

  And stole from stair to stair.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,

  We loved, sir—used to meet:

How sad and bad and mad it was—

  But then, how it was sweet!

ROBERT BROWNING.

Ante fores tumuli, quas saxa immania duro

obice dampnarant, scopulis substructa cavatis,

stat Dominus, nomenque ciet frigentis amici.

Nec mora, funereus revolutis rupibus horror

evomit exsequias gradiente cadavere vivas.

Solvite jam laetæ redolentia vincla sorores.

Solus odor sparsi spiramen aromatis efflat,

nec de corporeo nidorem sordida tabo

aura refert, oculos sanie stillante solutos

pristinus in speculum decor excitat, et putrefactas

tincta rubore genas paulatim purpura vestit.

Quis potuit fluidis animam suffundere membris?

Nimirum qui membra dedit, qui fictilis ulvæ

perflavit venam madidam, cui tabida gleba

traxit sanguineos infecto humore colores.

PRUDENTIUS.

La très-chère était nue, et connaissant mon cœur,

Elle n’avait gardé que ses bijoux sonores,

Dont le riche attirail lui donnait l’air vainqueur

Qu’ont dans leurs jours heureux les esclaves des Maures.

Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur,

Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre

Me ravit en extase, et j’aime avec fureur

Les choses où le son se mêle à la lumière.

Elle était donc couchée, et se laissait aimer,

Et du haut du divan elle souriait d’aise

A mon amour profond et doux comme la mer

Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise.

Les yeux fixés sur moi, comme un tigre dompté,

D’un air vague et rêveur, elle essayait des poses,

Et la candeur unie à la lubricité

Donnait un charme neuf à ses métamorphoses.

Et son bras et sa jambe, et sa cuisse et ses reins,

Polis comme de l’huile, onduleux comme un cygne,

Passaient devant mes yeux clairvoyants et sereins;

Et son ventre et ses seins, ces grappes de ma vigne.

Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin

Les hanches de l’Antiope au buste d’un imberbe,

Tant sa taille faisait ressortir son bassin;

Sur ce teint fauve et brun le fard était superbe!

—Et la lampe s’étant résignée à mourir,

Comme le foyer seul illuminait la chambre,

Chaque fois qu’il poussait un flamboyant soupir,

Il inondait de sang cette peau couleur d’ambre!

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half hung,

The floor of plaster and the walls of dung,

On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,

With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,

The George and Garter dangling from that bed,

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,

Great Villiers lies—alas, how changed from him,

That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!

Gallant and gay in Clivedon’s proud alcove,

The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love:

Or just as gay, at council, in the ring

Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king.

No wit to flatter, left of all his store!

No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.

There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,

And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.

ALEXANDER POPE.

His body was as straight as Circe’s wand;

Jove might have sipped out nectar from his hand.

Even as delicious meat is to the taste,

So was his neck in touching, and surpassed

The white of Pelops’ shoulder: I could tell ye

How smooth his breast was and how white his belly;

And whose immortal fingers did imprint

That heavenly path with many a curious dint

That runs along his back; but my rude pen

Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men,

Much less of powerful gods.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

Fair is my love that feeds among the lilies,

The lilies growing in that pleasant garden,

Where cupid’s mount, that well-beloved hill is,

And where the little god himself is warden.

See where my love sits in the bed of spices,

Beset all round with camphor, myrrh and roses,

And interlaced with curious devices,

Which her from all the world apart incloses.

BARTHOLOMEW GRIFFIN.

But, might we her sweet breast, Love’s Eden, see:

  On those snow mountlets apples be,

May cure those mischiefs wrought by the forbidden tree.

Her hands are soft as swanny down, and much

  More white; whose temperate warmth is such,

As when ripe gold and quickening sunbeams inly touch.

Ye sirens of the groves, who, perched on high,

  Tune guttural sweets, air-ministrels, why

From your bough-cradles, rocked with wind, to her d’ye fly?

Thou art silver-voiced, teeth-pearled, thy head’s gold-thatched;

  Nature’s reviver, Flora’s patched

(Though tricked in May’s new raiment) when with thee she’s matched.

EDWARD BENLOWES.

I serve a mistress whiter than the snow,

  Straighter than cedar, brighter than the glass,

Finer in trip and swifter than the roe,

  More pleasant than the field of flowering grass;

More gladsome to my withering hopes that fade

Than winter’s sun, or summer’s cooling shade.

Sweeter than swelling grape of ripest wine,

  Softer than feathers of the fairest swan,

Smoother than jet, more stately than the pine,

  Fresher than poplar, smaller than my span,

Clearer than beauty’s fiery-pointed beam,

Or icy crust of crystal’s frozen stream.

Yet is she curster than the bear by kind,

  And harder hearted than the aged oak,

More glib than oil, more fickle than the wind,

  Stiffer than steel, no sooner bent but broke.

Lo thus my service is a lasting sore;

Yet will I serve, although I die therefore.

Come on, ye critics, find one fault who dares;

For read it backwards, like a witch’s prayers,

’Twill read as well; throw not away your jests

On solid nonsense that abides all tests.

Wit, like tierce-claret, when ’t begin to pall,

Neglected lies and ’s of no use at all;

But, in its full perfection of decay,

Turns vinegar, and comes again in play. . . .

As skilful divers to the bottom fall

Sooner than those who cannot swim at all,

So, in this way of writing without thinking,

Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.

Thou writ’st below even thy own natural parts,

And with acquired dullness and new arts

Of studied nonsense tak’st kind readers’ hearts.

CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET.

Who says that fiction only and false hair

Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?

Is all good structure in a winding stair?

May no lines pass, except they do their duty

  Not to a true, but painted chair?

Is it no verse, except enchanted groves

And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?

Must purpling streams refresh a lover’s loves?

Must all be veiled, while he that reads divines,

  Catching the sense at two removes?

GEORGE HERBERT.

Trinitas, deitas, unitas æterna,

Majestas, potestas, pietas superna.

Sol, lumen et numen, cacumen semita,

Lapis, mons, petra, fons, flumen, pons et vita.

Tu sator, creator, amator, redemptor, salvator, luxque perpetua,

Tu tutor et decor, tu candor, tu splendor et odor quo vivunt mortua.

Tu vertex et apex, regum rex, legum lex et vindex, tu lux angelica.

Quem clamant, adorant, quem laudant, quem cantant, quem amant agmina cœlica.

Tu theos et heros, dives flos, vivens ros, rege nos, salva nos, perduc nos ad tronos superos et vera gaudia.

Tu decus et virtus, tu justus et verus, tu sanctus et bonus, tu rectus et summus Dominus, tibi sit gloria.

NOTKER BALBULUS.

Amara tanta tyri pastos sycalos sycalire

cellivoli scarras polili posylique lyvarras.

MAGIC SPELL, 12TH CENTURY.

Horse and hattock,

Horse and go,

Horse and pelatis, Ho, ho!

SPELL USED BY WITCHES WHEN

MOUNTING THEIR BROOMSTICKS.

ἔριφος ὲς γάλ’ ἔπετον,

(A kid, I fell into milk.)

ORPHIC FORMULA.

(A Head comes up with ears of corn, and she combs them into her lap.)

Gently dip, but not too deep,

For fear you make the golden beard to weep.

Fair maiden, white and red,

Comb me smooth and stroke my head,

And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.

(A second Head comes up full of gold, which she combs into her lap.)

Gently dip, but not too deep,

For fear thou make the golden beard to weep.

Fair maid, white and red,

Comb me smooth and stroke my head,

And every hair a sheaf shall be,

And every sheaf a golden tree.

GEORGE PEELE.

Bethsabe, bathing, sings, then speaks:

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair;

Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me;

Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me;

Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,

Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

          Let not my beauty’s fire

          Inflame unstaid desire,

          Nor pierce any bright eye

          That wandereth lightly.

Come, gentle Zephyr, trickt with those perfumes

That erst in Eden sweetened Adam’s love,

And stroke my body with thy silken fan.

This shade, sun proof, is yet no proof for thee;

Thy body smoother than this waveless spring

And purer than the substance of the same,

Can creep through that his lances cannot pierce.

GEORGE PEELE.

              the woods decay and fall,

The vapours weep their burden to the ground.

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan.

Now, as in Tullia’s tomb, one lamp burned clear,

Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,

  May these love-lamps we here enshrine

  In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.

JOHN DONNE.

Now, as in Tullia’s tomb one lamp burned clear,

Unchanged for fifteen hundred year. . . .

                “the first time in my life,

Our Sussex downs, so mighty, strong and bare,

That many a wood of fifteen hundred trees

Seems but a handful scattered lightly there. . . .”

O si chère de loin et proche et blanche, si

Délicieusement toi, Mary, que je songe

A quelque baume rare émané par mensonge.

Sur aucun bouquetier de cristal obscurci.

Le sais-tu, oui! pour moi voici des ans, voici

Toujours que ton sourire éblouissant prolonge

La même rose avec son bel été qui plonge

Dans autrefois et puis dans le futur aussi.

Mon cœur qui dans les nuits parfois cherche à s’entendre

Ou de quel dernier mot t’appeler le plus tendre

S’exalte en celui rien que chuchoté de sœur,

N’était, très grand trésor et tête si petite,

Que tu m’enseignes bien toute une autre douceur

Tout bas par le baiser seul dans tes cheveux dite.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

Vuolsi cosî colà, dove si puote

Ciò che si vuole; e più non dimandare.

The maidens came

When I was in my mother’s bower;

I had all that I would.

The bailey beareth the bell away;

The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

The silver is white, red is the gold;

The robes they lay in fold.

The bailey beareth the bell away;

The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

And through the glass window shines the sun.

How should I love, and I so young?

The bailey beareth the bell away;

The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

ANON.

O blest unfabled Incense Tree,

That burns in glorious Araby,

With red scent chalicing the air,

Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Half buried to her flaming breast

In this bright tree, she makes her nest,

Hundred-sunned Phoenix, when she must

Crumble at length to hoary dust.

Her gorgeous death-bed, her rich pyre

Burnt up with aromatic fire!

Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!

Her birthplace, when self-born again!

The mountainless green wilds among,

Here ends she her unechoing song:

With amber tears and odorous sighs,

Mourned by the desert when she dies.

GEORGE DARLEY.

Je suis le ténébreux, le veuf, l’inconsolé,

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie.

Ma seule étoile est morte, et mon luth constellé

Porte le soleil noir de la mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du tombeau toi qui m’as consolé,

Rend-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,

La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon cœur désolé,

Et la treille où le pampre à la rose s’allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phébus? Lusignan ou Biron?

Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la reine.

J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la Sirène,

Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron,

Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée,

Les soupris de la sainte et les cris de la fée.

GERARD DE NERVAL.

Gaze not on swans in whose soft breast

A full-hatched beauty seems to nest,

Nor snow which, falling from the sky,

Hovers in its virginity.

Gaze not on roses, though new-blown,

Graced with a fresh complexion,

Nor lilies which no subtle bee

Hath robbed by kissing-chemistry.

For if my emperess appears,

Swans moulting die, snow melts to tears,

Roses do blush and hang their heads,

Pale lilies shrink into their beds.

So have I seen stars big with light

Prove lanterns to the moon-eyed night.

Which, when Sol’s rays were once displayed,

Sank in their sockets and decayed.

HENRY NOEL.

The drunkard now supinely snores,

His load of ale sweats through his pores;

Yet when he wakes, the swine shall find

A crapula remains behind.

CHARLES COTTON.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town:

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently—

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls,

Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls,

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers,

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there,

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves:

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol’s diamond eye—

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed:

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass—

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea—

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave—there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,

In slightly sinking, the dull tide—

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow,

The hours are breathing faint and low;

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

O lull me, lull me, charming air!

  My senses rock with wonder sweet;

Like snow on wool thy fallings are;

  Soft like a spirit’s are thy feet.

    Grief who needs fear

    That hath an ear?

      Down let him lie

      And slumbering die,

And change his soul for harmony.

WILLIAM STRODE.

So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,

As, could they hear, the damned would make no noise,

But listen to thee (walking in thy chamber)

Melting melodious words, to lutes of amber.

ROBERT HERRICK.

Can any mortal mixture of earth’s mould

Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

Sure something holy lodges in that breast,

And with these raptures moves the vocal air

To testify his hidden residence.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard

My mother Circe with the Sirens three,

Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naïades,

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,

Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,

And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention,

And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,

And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;

But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

Such sober certainty of waking bliss,

I never heard till now.

JOHN MILTON.

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness till it smiled.

She measures every measure, everywhere

Meets art with art; sometimes as if in doubt,

Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,

Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note

Through the sleek passage of her open throat,

A clear unwrinkled song. . . .

            In ripened airs

A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

His honey-dropping tops;

. . . music and moonlight and feeling

      Are one.

A woodman, whose rough heart was out of tune,

(I think such hearts yet never came to good)

Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood

Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—

And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky

Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie,

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In the sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail,

Was interfused upon the silentness.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica; look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember’st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

My spirit like a charmèd bark doth swim

Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,

Far far away into the regions dim

Of Rapture—as a boat with swift sails winging

Its way adown some many-winding river,

Speeds through dark forests. . . .

My soul is an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing:

And thine doth like an angel sit

Beside the helm conducting it,

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.

It seems to float ever, for ever,

Upon that many-winding river,

Between mountains, woods, abysses,

A paradise of wildernesses!

Till, like one in slumber bound,

Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,

Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions

In music’s most serene dominions,

Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.

And we sail on, away, afar,

Without a course, without a star,

But by the instinct of sweet music driven;

Till through Elysian garden islets,

By thee, most beautiful of pilots,

Where never mortal pinnace glided,

The boat of my desire is guided:

Realms where the air we breathe is love,

Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,

Harmonizing the earth with what we feel above.

We have passed Age’s icy caves,

And Manhood’s dark and tossing waves,

And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:

Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee

Of shadow-peopled Infancy,

Through Death and Birth to a diviner day:

A paradise of vaulted bowers

Lit by downward-gazing flowers,

And watery paths that wind between

Wildernesses calm and green,

Peopled by shapes too bright to see,

And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;

Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously.

Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die

Perchance were death indeed!—Constantia, turn!

In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,

Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,

And from thy touch like fire doth leap.

Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet;

Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!

A breathless awe, like the swift change

Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers,

Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,

Thou breathest now in fast-ascending numbers.

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven

By the enchantment of thy strain,

And on my shoulders wings are woven,

To follow its sublime career

Beyond the mighty moons that wane

Upon the verge of nature’s utmost sphere,

Till the world’s shadowy walls are past and disappear.

              Antigone the sheen

Gan on a Trojan song to singen clear

That it an heaven was her voice to hear.

There let the pealing organ blow

To the full-voicèd quire below,

In service high and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy,

Sphere-born harmonious sisters Voice and Verse,

Wed your divine sounds; and mixed power employ

Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce,

And to our high-raised phantasy present

That undisturbèd song of pure concent

Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne

To Him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout and solemn jubilee;

Where the bright seraphim in burning row

Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow,

And the cherubic host in thousand quires

Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,

Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly.

              through all the spheres

Of Music’s heaven; and seat it there on high

In th’ empyrean of pure harmony.

But O, what art can teach,

What human voice can reach,

The sacred organ’s praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways

To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;

And trees uprooted left their place,

Sequacious of the lyre;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher;

When to her organ vocal breath was given,

An angel heard and straight appeared,

Mistaking Earth for Heaven.

Tell me, O Muse (for thou, or none, canst tell

The mystic powers that in blest numbers dwell,

Thou their great nature knowest, nor is it fit

This noblest gem of thine own crown to omit),

Tell me from whence these heavenly charms arise;

Teach the dull world to admire what they despise.

As first a various unformed hint we find

Rise in some god-like poet’s fertile mind,

Till all the parts and words their places take,

And with just marches verse and music make:—

Such was God’s poem, this world’s new essay;

So wild and rude in its first draft it lay.

The ungoverned parts no correspondence knew,

An artless war from thwarting motions grew;

Till they to number and fixt rules were brought

By the eternal Mind’s poetic thought.

Water and Air he for the tenor chose,

Earth made the base, the treble Flame arose;

To the active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,

To Saturn’s string a touch more soft and grave.

The motions straight and round, and swift, and slow,

And short, and long, were mixt and woven so,

Did in such artful figures smoothly fall,

As made this decent measured dance of All.

And this is Music: sounds that charm our ears

Are but one dressing that rich science wears.

Though no man hear’t, though no man it rehearse,

Yet will there still be music in my verse.

In this Great World so much of it we see,

The Lesser, man, is all o’er harmony.

Storehouse of all proportions! single quire!

Which first God’s breath did tunefully inspire!

From hence blest Music’s heavenly charms arise,

From sympathy which them and man allies.

Thus they our souls, thus they our bodies win,

Not by their force, but party that’s within.

Thus when two brethren strings are set alike,

To move them both, but one of them we strike.

                          His volant touch,

Instinct through all proportions low and high,

Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths, diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—“Must we die?”

Those commiserating sevenths—“Life might last! we can but try.”

“Were you happy?”—“Yes”—“And are you still as happy?—Yes. And you?”

—“Then more kisses!”—“Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?”

Hark, the dominant’s persistance till it must be answered to.

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

“Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!”

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from Nature’s close reserve,

In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

“Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned,

The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.”

ROBERT BROWNING.

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,

And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;

But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

Such sober certainty of waking bliss,

I never heard till now.

      in pleasing slumber lulls the sense

And in sweet madness robs it of itself,

Nor cold, nor stern, my soul! yet I detest

  These scented rooms where, to a gaudy throng,

Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast

  In intricacies of laborious song.

These feel not Music’s genuine power, nor deign

  To melt at Nature’s passion-warbled plaint;

But when the long-breathed singer’s uptrilled strain

  Bursts in a squall, they gape for wonderment.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Think not it was those colours, red and white,

Laid but on flesh that could affect me so,

But something else, which thought holds under lock

And hath no key of words to open it.

They are the smallest pieces of the mind

That pass the narrow organ of the voice;

The great remain behind in that vast orb

Of the apprehension, and are never born.

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

If all the pens that ever poets held

Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,

And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,

Their minds and muses, on admired themes;

If every heavenly quintessence they still

From their immortal flowers of poesy,

Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive

The highest reaches of a human wit;

If these had made one poem’s period,

And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,

Yet should there hover in their restless heads

One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least

Which into words no virtue can digest.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best!

I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

WALT WHITMAN.

“O ben creato spirito, che ai rai

di vita eterna la dolcezza senti,

che non gustata non s’intende mai. . . .”

O knit me that am crumbled dust! the heap

  Is all dispersed and cheap.

Give for a handful but a thought,

  And it is bought.

    Hadst thou

Made me a star, a pearl or a rainbow,

  The beams I then had shot

  My light had lessened not;

    But now

I find myself the less the more I grow.

    The world

Is full of voices; man is called and hurled

  By each; he answers all,

  Knows every note and call;

    Hence still

Fresh dotage tempts or old usurps his will.

Yet hadst thou clipt my wings when coffined in

    This quickened mass of sin,

And saved that light, which freely thou

  Didst then bestow,

    I fear,

I should have spurned and said thou didst forbear,

  Or that thy store was less;

  But now since thou didst bless

    So much,

I grieve, my God, that thou hast made me such.

    I grieve?

O, yes! thou know’st I do; come, and relieve

And tame and keep down with thy light

Dust that would rise and dim the sight,

  Lest left alone too long

  Amidst the noise and throng,

    Oppressed I,

Striving to save the whole, by parcels die.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Leave, leave thy gadding thoughts;

    Who pores

    And spies

  Still out of door,

    Descries

  Within them nought.

The skin and shell of things,

    Though fair,

    Are not

  Thy wish nor prayer,

    But got

  By mere despair

    Of wings.

To rack old elements

    Or dust

    And say:

  Sure here he must

    Needs stay,

  Is not the way,

    Nor just.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Fate which foresaw

How frivolous a baby man would be—

By what distractions he would be possessed,

How he would pour himself in every strife,

And well nigh change his own identity—

That it might keep from his capricious play

His genuine self, and force him to obey

Even in his own despite his being’s law,

Bade through the deep recesses of our breast

The unregarded river of our life

Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;

And that we should not see

The buried stream, and seem to be

Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,

Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,

But often in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to enquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us—to know

Whence our lives come, and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves

But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.

And we have been on many thousand lines,

And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;

But hardly have we, for one little hour,

Been on our own line, have we been ourselves—

Hardly had skill to utter one of all

The nameless feelings that course through our breast;

But they course on for ever unexpressed.

And long we try in vain to speak and act

Our hidden self, and what we say and do

Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

And then we will no more be racked

With inward striving, and demand

Of all the thousand nothings of the hour

Their stupefying power;

Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!

Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,

From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne

As from an infinitely distant land,

Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey

A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare—

When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,

When, jaded with the rush and glare

Of the interminable hours,

Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,

When our world-deafened ear

Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed—

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast.

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,

And hears its winding murmur; and he sees

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race

Wherein he doth for ever chase

That flying and elusive shadow, rest.

An air of coolness plays upon his face,

And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.

And then he thinks he knows

The hills where his life rose,

And the sea where it goes.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Cette source de mort, cette homicide peste,

Ce péché, dont l’enfer a le monde infecté,

M’a laissé pour tout être un bruit d’avoir été,

Et je suis de moi-même une image funeste.

L’Auteur de l’Univers, le Monarque céleste,

S’était rendu visible en ma seule beauté;

Ce vieux titre d’honneur qu’autrefois j’ai porté

Et que je porte encore est tout ce qui me reste.

Mais c’est fait de ma gloire et je ne suis plus rien

Qu’un fantôme qui court après l’ombre d’un bien

Ou qu’un corps animé du seul ver qui le ronge.

Non, je ne suis plus rien, quand je veux m’éprouver,

Qu’un esprit ténébreux qui voit tout comme en songe,

Et cherche incessamment ce qu’il ne peut trouver.

JEAN OGIER DE GOMBAULD.

Quand chez les débauchés l’aube blanche et vermeille

Entre en société de l’idéal rongeur,

Par l’opération d’un mystère vengeur,

Dans la brute assoupie un Ange se réveille.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle

Sur l’esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,

Et que de l’horizon embrassant tout le cercle

Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;

Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,

Où l’espérance, comme une chauve-souris,

S’en va battant les murs de son aile timide

Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;

Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses trainées

D’une vaste prison imite les barreaux,

Et qu’un peuple muet d’infâmes araignées

Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux;

Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie

Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,

Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie

Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.

Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,

Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l’Espoir,

Vaincu, pleure, et l’Angoisse atroce, despotique,

Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!

Parents first season us; then schoolmasters

Deliver us to laws; they send us bound

To rules of reason, holy messengers;

Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,

Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,

Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,

Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,

Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,

The sound of glory ringing in our ears;

Without, our shame; within, our consciences;

Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.

  Yet all these fences and their whole array

  One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

GEORGE HERBERT.

  Weighing the steadfastness and state

Of some mean things which here below reside,

Where birds, like watchful clocks, the noiseless date

  And intercourse of times divide,

Where bees at night get home and hive, and flowers,

  Early as well as late,

Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers;

  I would, said I, my God would give

The staidness of these things to man! for these

To his divine appointments always cleave,

  And no new business breaks their peace:

The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine;

  The flowers without clothes live,

Yet Solomon was never dressed so fine.

  Man hath still either toys or care:

But hath no root, nor to one place is tied,

But ever restless and irregular,

  About this earth doth run and ride.

He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;

  He says it is so far,

That he has quite forgot how to go there.

  He knocks at all doors, strays and roams;

Nay, hath not so much wit as some stones have,

Which, in the darkest nights, point to their homes,

  By some hid sense their Maker gave.

Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest

  And passage through these looms

God ordered motion, but ordained no rest.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Heaven, what an age is this! what race

  Of giants are sprung up that dare

Thus fly in the Almighty’s face

  And with his Providence make war.

I can go nowhere but I meet

  With malcontents and mutineers,

As if in life was nothing sweet,

  And we must blessings reap in tears.

O senseless Man that murmurs still

  For happiness, and does not know,

Even though he might enjoy his will,

  What he would have to make him so!

CHARLES COTTON.

The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth;

The great masters know the earth’s words and use them more than the audible words. . . .

The Earth does not argue,

Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,

Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,

Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,

Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out

Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.

The Earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still underneath;

Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves,

Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers,

Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail.

To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail,

The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail;

Also day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.

WALT WHITMAN.

How fevered is the man who cannot look

Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,

Who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book,

And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;

It is as if the rose should pluck herself,

Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,

As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,

Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom;

But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,

For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,

And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,

The undisturbèd lake has crystal space;

    Why then should man, teasing the world for grace,

    Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?

JOHN KEATS.

As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, . . .

As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,

Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom.

As proude Bayard ginneth for to skippe

Out of the wey, so priketh him his corn,

Till he a lash have of the longe whippe,

Than thenketh he, “though I praunce al biforn

First in the trace, ful fat and newe shorn,

Yet I am but an hors and horses law

I moot endure and with my feres draw.”

So fared it by this fierce and proude knight.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea,

Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,

Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,

And his rapt ship run on her side so low

That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.

There is no danger to a man that knows

What life and death is; there’s not any law

Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful

That he should stoop to any other law.

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,

Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs:

Des peaux-rouges criards les avait pris pour cibles,

Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.

J’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages,

Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais.

Quand avec mes haleurs out fini ces tapages,

Les Fleuves m’ont laissé descendre ou je voulais . . .

Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,

L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin

Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures

Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.

Et dès lors je me suis baigné dans le poème

De la mer infusé d’astres et lactescent,

Dévorant les azurs verts où, flottaison blême

Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend. . . .

Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes,

Et les ressacs, et les courants; je sais le soir,

L’aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes,

Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir.

J’ai vu le soleil has taché d’horreurs mystiques,

Illuminant de longs figements violets,

Pareils à des acteurs de drames très antiques,

Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets. . . .

J’ai heurté, savez-vous? d’incroyables Florides

Mèlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères, aux peaux

D’hommes, des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides,

Sous l’horizon des mers, à des glauques troupeaux.

J’ai vu fermenter les marais, énormes nasses

Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan:

Des écroulements d’eau au milieu de bonaces,

Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant;

Glaciers, soleils d’argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises,

Echouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns,

Où les serpents géants dévorés de punaises

Choient des arbres tordus avec de noirs parfums. . . .

Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses,

Jeté par l’ouragan dans l’éther sans oiseau,

Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses

N’auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d’eau,

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues

Le rut des Béhémots et des Maelstroms épais,

Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues,

Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets.

J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux, et des îles

Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:

Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles,

Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur?

Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré. Les aubes sont navrantes,

Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer.

L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.

Oh, que ma quille éclate! Oh, que j’aille à la mer!

Si je désire une eau d’Europe, c’est la flache

Noire et froide où, vers le crépuscule embaumé,

Un enfant accroupi, plein de tristesse, lâche

Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames,

Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons,

Ni traverser l’orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes,

Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

The Pulley

  When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

Let us, said He, pour on him all we can;

Let the world’s riches which dispersèd lie

  Contract into a span.

  So strength first made a way,

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that alone of all his treasure,

  Rest in the bottom lay.

  For if I should, said He,

Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gift instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

  So both should losers be.

  Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

  May toss him to my breast.

GEORGE HERBERT.

  Lord, what a busy restless thing

    Hast thou made man!

  Each day and hour he is on the wing,

    Rests not a span.

  Hadst thou given to this active dust

    A state untired,

  The lost son had not left the husk,

    Nor home desired.

  That was thy secret, and it is

    Thy mercy too;

  For when all fails to bring to bliss,

    Then this must do.

O Lord, and what a purchase will that be,

To take us sick, that, sound, would not take thee!

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Over hills and uplands high

Hurry me, Nymphs! O hurry me!

Where green Earth from azure sky

Seems but one blue step to be:

Where the sun his wheel of gold

Burnishes deeply in her mould,

And her shining walks uneven

Seem declivities of heaven.

Come, where high Olympus nods,

Ground-sill to the hall of Gods!

Let us through the breathless air

Soar insuperable, where

Audibly in mystic ring

The angel orbs are heard to sing;

And from that bright vantage ground

Viewing nether heaven profound,

Mark the eagle near the sun

Scorching to gold his pinions dun;

With fleecy birds of paradise

Up floating to their native skies:

Or hear the wild swans far below

Faintly whistle as they row

Their course on the transparent tide

That fills the hollow welkin wide.

Light-skirt dancers, blithe and boon,

With high hosen and low shoon,

’Twixt sandal bordure and kirtle rim

Showing one pure wave of limb,

And frequent to the cestus fine

Lavish beauty’s undulous line,

Till like roses veiled in snow

’Neath the gauze your blushes glow;

Nymphs, with tresses which the wind

Sleekly tosses to his mind,

More deliriously dishevelled

Than when the Naxian widow revelled

With her flush bridegroom on the ooze,

Hurry me, Sisters! where ye choose.

GEORGE DARLEY.

The Teacher’s Monologue

The room is quiet, thoughts alone

  People its mute tranquillity;

The yoke put off, the long task done,—

  I am, as it is bliss to be,

Still and untroubled. Now I see,

  For the first time, how soft the day

O’er waveless water, stirless tree,

  Silent and sunny, wings its way.

Now as I watch that distant hill,

  So faint, so blue, so far removed,

Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill,

  That home, where I am known and loved. . . .

Sometimes I think a narrow heart

  Makes me thus mourn those far away,

And keeps my love so far apart

  From friends and friendships of to-day;

Sometimes I think ’tis but a dream

  I treasure up so jealously;

All the sweet thoughts I live on seem

  To vanish into vacancy;

And then this strange coarse world around

  Seems all that’s palpable and true,

And every sight and every sound

  Combine my spirit to subdue

To aching grief; so void and lone

  Is Life, and Earth—so worse than vain

The hopes that, in my own heart sown

  And cherished by such sun and rain

As Joy and transient Sorrow shed,

  Have ripened to a harvest there:

Alas! methinks I hear it said,

  “Thy golden sheaves are empty air.”

CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

Though but a shadow, but a sliding,

  Let me know some little joy;

  We that suffer long annoy

  Are contented with a thought,

  Through an idle fancy wrought:

O let my joys have some abiding!

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve—

  Is such my future fate?

The morn was dreary; must the eve

  Be also desolate?

Well, such a life at least makes Death

  A welcome, wished-for friend;

Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith,

  To suffer to the end!

CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked, “No lingering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief!”

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small

Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,

Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.

The wind sounds only in opposing straits,

The sea, beside the shore; man’s spirit rends

Its quiet only up against the ends

Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates,

Where, worked and worn by passionate debates,

And losing by the loss it apprehends,

The flesh rocks round, and every breath it sends

Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states

Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord,

Make room for rest around me! out of sight

Now float me, of the vexing land abhorred,

Till in deep calms of space my soul may right

Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,

And rush exultant on the infinite.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

              I love all waste

And solitary places, where we taste

The pleasure of believing what we see

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

And such was this wide ocean, and this shore

More barren than its billows.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

                                    We spun

A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun

Of this familiar life, which seems to be

But is not—or is but quaint mockery

Of all we would believe, and sadly blame

The jarring and inexplicable frame

Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize

The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes

Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess

The issue of the earth’s great business,

When we shall be as we no longer are—

Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war

O winds, and sigh, but tremble not.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.

Fuir! là-bas fuir! je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres

D’être parmi l’écume inconnue et les cieux!

Rien, ni les vieux jardins reflétés par les yeux

Ne retiendra ce cœur qui dans la mer se trempe,

O nuits! ni la clarté déserte de ma lampe

Sur le vide papier que la blancheur défend,

Et ni la jeune femme allaitant son enfant.

Je partirai! Steamer, balançant ta mâture,

Lève l’ancre pour une exotique nature!

Un Ennui, désolé par de cruels espoirs,

Croit encore à l’adieu suprême des mouchoirs!

Et, peut-être, les mâts, invitant les orages

Sont-ils de ceux qu’un vent penche sur les naufrages

Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts, ni fertiles îlots. . . .

Mais, ô mon cœur, entends le chant des matelots!

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

  Nor the furious winter’s rages.

“Do you not hear the Aziola cry?

  Methinks she must be nigh,”

    Said Mary, as we sate

In dusk, ere stars were lit or candles brought:

    And I, who thought

This Aziola was some tedious woman,

  Asked, “Who is Aziola?” How elate

I felt to know that it was nothing human,

  No mockery of myself to fear or hate!

    And Mary saw my soul,

And laughed, and said, “Disquiet yourself not;

      “ ’Tis nothing but a little downy owl.”

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained.

I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable and industrious over the whole earth,

So they show their relations to me, and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

Behold him, priests, and though he stink of sweat,

Disdain him not; for shall I tell you what?

Such climb to heaven before the shaven crowns.

But how? Forsooth, with true humility.

Not that they hoard their grain when it is cheap,

Not that they kill the calf to have the milk,

Not that they set debate between their lords

By earing up the balks that part their bounds;

Not for because they can both crouch and creep

(The guilefull’st men that ever God yet made)

When as they mean most mischief and deceit;

Not that they can cry out on landlords loud,

And say they rack their rents an ace too high,

When they themselves do sell the landlord’s lamb

For greater price than ewe was wont be worth;

But for they feed with fruits of their great pains

Both king and knight and priests in cloister pent.

Therefore I say that sooner some of them

Shall scale the walls that lead us up to heaven

Than corn-fed beasts, whose belly is their God,

Although they preach of more perfection.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE.

“None can usurp this height,” returned that shade,

“But those to whom the miseries of the world

Are misery, and will not let them rest.

All else who find a haven in the world,

Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,

If by a chance into this fane they come,

Rot on the pavement, where thou rotted’st half.”

“Are there not thousands in the world,” said I,

Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade,

“Who love their fellows even unto the death,

Who feel the giant agony of the world,

And more, like slaves to poor humanity,

Labour to mortal good? I sure should see

Other men here, but I am here alone.”

“Those whom thou spak’st of are no visionaries,”

Rejoined that voice, “they are no dreamers weak,

They seek no wonder but the human face,

No music but a happy-noted voice—

They come not here, for thou art less than they.

What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,

To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing,

A fever of thyself; think of the earth;

What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee?

What haven? every creature hath its home,

Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,

Whether his labours be sublime or low—

The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct:

Only the dreamer venoms all his days,

Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.

Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shared,

Such things as thou art are admitted oft

Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile,

And suffered in these temples: for that cause

Thou standest safe beneath the statue’s knees.”

JOHN KEATS.

These things, Ulysses,

The wise Bards also

Behold and sing.

But oh, what labour!

O Prince, what pain!

They too can see

Tiresias:—but the Gods

Who gave them vision,

Added this law:

That they should bear too

His groping blindness,

His dark foreboding,

His scorned white hairs;

Bear Hera’s anger

Through a life lengthened

To seven ages.

They see the Centaurs

On Pelion:—then they feel,

They too, the maddening wine

Swell their large veins to bursting: in wild pain

They feel the biting spears

Of the grim Lapithæ and Theseus drive,

Drive crashing through their bones; they feel

High on a jutting rock in the red stream

Alcmena’s dreadful son

Ply his bow:—such a price

The Gods exact for song;

To become what we sing.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

And can I ever bid these joys farewell?

Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,

Where I may find the agonies, the strife

  Of human hearts.

                  What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them, overplied

In Liberty’s defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

As when it happeneth that some lovely town

Unto a barbarous besieger falls,

Who there by sword and flame himself installs

And, cruel, it in tears and blood doth drown;

Her beauty spoiled, her citizens made thralls,

His spite yet so cannot her all throw down,

But that some statue, arch, fane of renown

Yet lurks unmaimed within her weeping walls:

So, after all the spoil, disgrace and wrack,

That time, the world and death could bring combined,

Amidst that mass of ruins they did make,

Safe and all scarless yet remains my mind.

    From this so high transcending rapture springs

    That I, all else defaced, not envy kings.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND.

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow

Was the Palladium, high ’mid rock and wood;

And Hector was in Ilium there below,

And fought, and saw it not, but there it stood.

It stood; and sun and moonshine rained their light

On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.

Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight

Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.

Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;

Cold plashing, past it crystal waters roll;

We visit it by moments, ah! too rare.

Men will renew the battle in the plain

To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;

Hector and Ajax will be there again;

Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,

And fluctuate ’tween blind hopes and blind despairs,

And fancy that we put forth all our life,

And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,

Upon our life a ruling effluence send;

And when it fails, fight as we will, we die;

And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Come, lovely and soothing Death,

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,

In the day, in the night, to all, to each,

Sooner or later, delicate Death.

Praised be the fathomless universe

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;

And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise

For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.

Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

Then I chant it for thee—I glorify thee above all;

I bring thee a song, that, when thou must indeed come, thou come unfalteringly.

Approach, encompassing Death—strong deliveress!

When it is so—when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead

Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,

Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.

WALT WHITMAN.

Death is before me to-day,

Like the recovery of a sick man,

Like going forth into a garden after sickness;

Death is before me to-day,

Like the odour of myrrh,

Like sitting under the sail on a windy day;

Death is before me to-day,

Like the odour of lotus flowers,

Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness;

Death is before me to-day,

Like the course of the freshet,

Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house,

When he has spent years in captivity.

EGYPTIAN POEM.

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep

Without identity,

And never care how rain may steep,

Or snow may cover me!

No promised heaven these wild desires

Could all, or half, fulfil;

No threatened hell, with quenchless fires,

Subdue this quenchless will!

So say I, and still say the same;

Still, to my death, will say—

Three gods within this little frame

Are warring night and day;

Heaven could not hold them all, and yet

They all are held in me,

And must be mine, till I forget

My present entity!

Oh, for the time, when in my breast

Their struggles will be o’er!

Oh, for the day, when I shall rest,

And never suffer more!

EMILY BRONTË.

Since Nature’s works be good, and death doth serve

As Nature’s work, why should we fear to die?

Since fear is vain, but when it may preserve,

Why should we fear that which we cannot fly?

Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears,

Disarming human minds of native might;

While each conceit an ugly figure bears,

Which were not evil, well viewed in reason’s light.

Our owly eyes, which dimmed with passions be,

And scarce discern the dawn of coming day,

Let them be cleared, and now begin to see

Our life is but a step in dusty way.

  Then let us hold the bliss of peaceful mind;

  Since this we feel, great loss we cannot find.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

Non è viltà, ne da viltà procede

S’alcun, per evitar piu crudel sorte,

Odia la propria vita e cerca morte,

Se senza alcun rimedio il suo mal vede.

Ma bene è vil chi senza affanno crede

Travagliar manco in vita, e si conforte

Dicendo: io vivo. Ah menti poco accorte,

Che hanno in fedel morte poco fede!

Meglio è morire all’animo gentile

Che sopportar inevitabil danno

Che lo farria cambiar animo e stile.

Quanti ha la morte già tratti d’affanno!

Ma molti ch’hanno il chiamar morte a vile,

Quanto talor sia dolce ancor non sanno.

GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI.

Was it a dream? We sailed, I thought we sailed,

Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,

Bordered, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,

On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,

On the red pinings of their forest floor,

Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines

The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change

Of bright-leafed chestnuts and mossed walnut trees

And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.

Swiss chalets glittered on the dewy slopes,

And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came

Notes of wild pastoral music—over all

Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.

Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge,

Backed by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood,

Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves

Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof

Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within,

Under the eaves, peered rows of Indian corn.

We shot beneath the cottage with the stream.

On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms

Came forth—Olivia’s, Marguerite! and thine.

Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast;

Straw hats bedecked their heads, with ribbons blue,

Which danced and on their shoulders, fluttering, played.

They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved,

And more than mortal impulse filled their eyes.

Their lips moved; their white arms, waved eagerly,

Flashed once, like falling streams; we rose, we gazed.

One moment on the rapid’s top our boat

Hung poised—and then the darting river of Life

(Such now, methought, it was) the river of Life,

Loud thundering bore us by; swift, swift it foamed,

Black under cliffs it raced, round headlands shone.

Soon the planked cottage by the sun-warmed pines

Faded—the moss—the rocks; us burning plains,

Bristled with cities, us the sea received.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Pour l’enfant amoureux de cartes et d’estampes,

L’univers est égal à son vaste appétit.

Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes!

Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

Enough, we live!—and if a life,

With large results so little rife,

Though bearable, seem hardly worth

This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;

Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,

The solemn hills around us spread,

This stream which falls incessantly,

The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,

If I might lend their life a voice,

Seem to bear rather than rejoice.

And even could the intemperate prayer

Man iterates, while these forbear,

For movement, for an ampler sphere.

Pierce Fate’s impenetrable ear;

Not milder is the general lot

Because our spirits have forgot,

In action’s dizzying eddy whirled,

The something that infects the world.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Here, in this little Bay,

Full of tumultuous life and great repose,

Where, twice a day,

The purposeless glad ocean comes and goes,

Under high cliffs and far from the huge town,

I sit me down.

For want of me the world’s course will not fail;

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

Timber

Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,

Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers

Passed o’er thy head: many light hearts and wings,

Which now are dead, lodged in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies;

Fresh groves grow up and their green branches shoot,

Towards the old and still enduring skies,

While the low violet thrives at their root.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

If dead we cease to be, if total gloom

  Swallow up life’s brief flash for aye, we fare

As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom,

  Whose sound and motion not alone declare,

But are their whole of being. If the breath

  Be life itself, and not its task and tent,

If even a soul like Milton’s can know death;

  O man, thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,

Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!

  Surplus of nature’s dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase

Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

  She formed with restless hands unconsciously!

Blank accident! nothing’s anomaly!

  If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,

Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,

The counter weights! Thy laughter and thy tears

  Mean but themselves, each fittest to create

And to repay the other. Why rejoices

  Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?

  Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner’s hood,

Why waste thy sighs and thy lamenting voices,

Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel’st warm or cold?

Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold

  These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?

Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!

Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none,

Thy being’s being is contradiction.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Reason, an Ignis Fatuus in the mind,

Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,

Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes

Through error’s fenny bogs and thorny brakes,

Whilst the misguided follower climbs in vain

Mountains of whimsies heaped in his own brain;

Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down

Into doubt’s boundless sea, where, like to drown,

Books bear him up a while and make him try

To swim with bladders of philosophy,

In hopes still to o’ertake the skipping light.

The vapour dances in his dazzling sight,

Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,

Lead him to death, and make him understand,

After a search so painful and so long,

That all his life he had been in the wrong;

Huddled in dirt, the reasoning engine lies,

Who was so proud, so witty and so wise.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.

The sun and stars that float in the open air;

The apple-shaped earth and we upon it—surely the drift of them is something grand!

I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,

And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon mot, or reconnaissance.

And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us,

And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

WALT WHITMAN.