Thomas Kinsella

Mirror in February

 The day dawns with scent of must and rain,
 Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
 Under the fading lamp, half dressed - my brain
 Idling on some compulsive fantasy-
 I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
 Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
 A dry downturning mouth.

 It seems again that it is time to learn,
 In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
 To which, for the time being, I return.
 Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
 I read that I have looked my last on youth
 And little more; for they are not made whole
 That reach the age of Christ.

 Below my window the awakening trees,
 Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
 Suffering their brute necessities,
 And how should the flesh not quail that span for span
 Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
 I fold my towel with what grace I can,
 Not young and not renewable, but man.


Another September

 Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw
 With the touch of the dawn, wrapped in a minor peace,
 Hears through an open window the garden draw
 Long pitch black breaths, lay bare its apple trees,
 Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweetened soil,
 Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates.
 Nearer the river sleeps St. John's, all toil
 Locked fast inside a dream with iron gates.

 Domestic Autumn, like an animal
 Long used to handling by those countrymen,
 Rubs her kind hide against the bedroom wall
 Sensing a fragrant child come back again
 - Not this half-tolerated consciousness
 That plants its grammar in her yielding weather
 But that unspeaking daughter, growing less
 Familiar where we fell asleep together.

 Wakeful moth wings blunder near a chair,
 Toss their light shell at the glass, and go
 To inhabit the living starlight. Stranded hair
 Stirs on still linen. It is as though
 The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name,
 Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers
 And balances--down the lampless darkness they came,
 Moving like women : Justice, Truth, such figures.


Patrick Kavanagh

Stony Grey Soil

 O stony grew soil of Monaghan
 The laugh from my love you thieved
 You took the gay child of my passion
 And gave me your clod-conceived.

 You clogged the feet of my boyhood
 and I believed that my stumble
 Had the poise and stride of Apollo
 And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.

 You told me the plough was immortal
 O green-life-conquering plough!
 Your mandril strained, your coulter blunted
 In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

 You sang on steaming dunghills
 A song of cowards' brood,
 You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
 You fed me on swinish food.

 You flung a ditch on my vision
 Of beauty love and truth.
 O stony grey soil of Monaghan
 You burgled my bank of youth!

 Lost the long hours of pleasure
 All the women that love young men
 O can I still stroke the monster's back
 Or write with unpoisioned pen
 His name in these lonely verses
 Or mention the dark fields where
 The first gay flight of my lyric
 Got caught in a peasant's prayer.

 Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco--
 Wherever I turn I see
 In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
 Dead loves that were born for me.


Advent

 We have tested and tasted too much, lover--
 Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
 But here in the Advent-darkened room
 Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
 Of penance will charm back the luxury
 Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
 the knowledge we stole but could not use.

 And the newness that was in every stale thing
 When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
 Winder in a black slanting Ulster hill
 Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
 Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
 You and me to they yard gate to watch the whins
 And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

 O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
 For the difference that sets an old phrase burning--
 We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
 Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
 And we'll hear it among decent men too
 Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
 Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
 Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
 God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
 The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
 Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
 We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
 Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour--
 And Christ comes with a  January flower.


Memory of my Father

 Ever old man I see
 Reminds me of my father
 When he had fallen in love with death
 One time when sheaves were gathered.

 That man I saw in Gardner Street
 Stumble on the kerb was one,
 He stared at me half-eyed,
 I might have been his son.

 And I remember the musician
 Faltering over his fiddle
 In Bayswater, London
 He too set me the riddle.

 Every old man I see
 In october-coloured weather
 Seems to say to me :
 "I was once your father."


Iniskeen Road : July Evening

 The bicycles go by in twos and threes--
 There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
 And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
 And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
 Half-past eight and there is not a spot
 Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
 That might turn out a man or woman, not
 A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

 I have what every poet hates in spite
 Of all the solemn talk of contemplation
 Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
 Of being king and government and nation.
 A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
 Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.


Canal Bank Walk

 Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
 Pouring redemption for me, that I do
 The will of God, wallow in the habitual the banal
 Grow with nature again as before I grew.
 he bright stick trapped,the breeze adding a third
 Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
 And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
 Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
 O unworn world enrapture me, enrapture me in a web
 Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
 Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
 To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
 For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
 From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.


Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin
 "Erected to the Memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien"

 O commemorate me where there is water,
 Canal water preferably, so stilly
 Greeny at the heart of summer, Brother
 Commemorate me thus beautifully.
 Where by a lock Niagariously roars
 The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
 Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
 Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands
 A swan goes by head low with many apologies.
 Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges
 And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
 And other far-flung towns mythologies.
 O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
 Tomb--just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.


Austin Clarke

The Lost Heifer

 When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
 In the gap of the pure cold wind
 And the watery hazes of the hazel
 Brought her into my mind,
 I thought of the last honey by the water
 That no hive can find.

 Brightness was drenching through the branches
 When she wandered again,
 Turning sliver out of dark grasses
 Where the skylark had lain,
 And her voice coming softly over the meadow
 Was the mist becoming rain.


The Blackbird of Derrycairn

 Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
 Is whistling and the sun is brighter
 Than God's own shadow in the cup now
 Forget the hour bell. Mournful matins
 Will sound as well, Patric, at nightfall.

 Faintly through mist of broken water
 Fionn heard my melody in Norway,
 He found the forest track he brought back
 This beak to gild the branch and tell there
 Why men must welcome in the daylight.

 He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
 The shout of gillies in the morning
 When packs are counted and the swans cloud
 Loch Erne, but more than all those voices,
 My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

 In little cells behind a cashel,
 Patric, no handbell has a glad sound,
 But knowledge is found among the branches.
 Listen! The song that shakes my feathers
 Will thong the leather of your satchels.

 Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
 Is whistling . . .


The Planter's Daughter

 When night stirred at sea,
 An the fire brought a crowd in
 They say that her beauty
 Was music in mouth
 And few in the candlelight
 Thought her too proud,
 For the house of the planter
 Is known by the trees.

 Men that had seen her
 Drank deep and were silent,
 The women were speaking
 Wherever she went --
 As a bell that is rung
 Or a wonder told shyly
 And O she was the Sunday
 In every week.


No Second Troy

 Why should I blame her that she filled my days
 With misery, or that she would of late
 Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
 Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
 Had they but courage equal to desire?
 What could have made her peaceful with a mind
 That nobleness made simple as a fire,
 With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
 That is not natural in an age like this,
 Being high and solitary and most stern.
 Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
 Was there another Troy for her to burn?


September 1913

 What need you being come to sense,
 But fumble in a greasy till,
 And add the halfpence to the pence
 And prayer to shivering prayer, until
 You have dried the marrow from the bone?
 For men were born to pray and save:
 Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
 It's with O'Leary in the grave.

 Yet they were of a different kind,
 The names that stilled your childish play,
 They have gone about the world like wind,
 But little time had they to pray
 For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
 And what, God help us, could they save?
 Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
 It's with O'Leary in the grave.

 Was it for this the wild geese spread
 They grey wing upon every tide;
 For this that all the blood was shed,
 For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
 And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
 All that delirium of the brave?
 Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
 It's with O'Leary in the grave.

 Yet could we turn the years again,
 And call those exiles as they were
 In all their loneliness and pain,
 You'd cry, "Some woman's yellow hair
 Has maddened every mother's son":
 They weighed so lightly what they gave
 But let them be they're dead and gone,
 They're with O'Leary in the grave.


The Fisherman

 Although I can see him still,
 The freckled man who goes
 To a grey place on a hill
 In grey Connemara clothes
 At dawn to cast his flies,
 It's long since I began to call up to the eyes
 This wise and simple man.
 All day I'd looked in the face
 What I had hoped 'twould be
 To write for my own race
 And the reality;
 The living men that I hate,
 The dead man that I loved,
 The craven man in his seat
 The insolent unreproved,
 And no knave brought to book
 Who has won a drunken cheer,
 The witty man and his joke
 Aimed at the commonest ear,
 The clever man who cries
 the catch-cries of the clown,
 The beating down of the wise,
 And great Art beaten down.

 Maybe a twelvemonth since
 Suddenly I began,
 In scorn of this audience,
 Imagining a man,
 And his sun-freckled face,
 And grey Connemara cloth,
 Climbing up to a place
 Where stone is dark under froth,
 And the down-turn of his wrist
 When flies drop in the stream;
 A man who does not exist,
 A man who is but a dream;
 And cried, "Before I am old
 I shall have written him one
 Poem maybe as cold
 And passionate as the dawn."


Sailing to Byzantium

 That is no country for old men. The young
 In one another's arms, birds in the trees
 --Those dying generations--at their song,
 The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
 Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
 Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
 Caught in that sensual music all neglect
 Monuments of unageing intellect.

 An aged man is but a paltry thing,
 A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
 Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
 For every tatter in its mortal dress,
 Nor is there singing school but studying
 Monuments of its own magnificence:
 And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
 To the holy city of Byzantium.

 O sages standing in God's holy fire
 As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
 Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
 And be the singing-masters of my soul.
 Consume my heart away; sick with desire
 And fastened to a dying animal
 It knows not what it is; and gather me
 Into the artifice of eternity.

 Once out of nature I shall never take
 My bodily form from any natural thing,
 But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
 Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
 To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
 Or set upon a golden bough to sing
 To lords and ladies of Byzantium
 Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


Among School Children

 I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
 A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
 The children learn to cipher and to sing,
 Top study reading-books and histories,
 To cut and sew, be neat in everything
 In the best modern way-- the children's eyes
 In momentary wonder stare upon
 A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
 Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
 Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
 That changed some childish day to tragedy--
 Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
 Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
 Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
 Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

 And thinking of that fit of grief or rate
 I look upon one child or t'other there
 And wonder if she stood so at that age--
 For even daughters of the swan can share
 Something of every paddler's heritage--
 And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
 And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
 She stands before me as a living child.

 Her present image floats into the mind--
 Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
 Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
 And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
 And I though never of Ledaean kind
 Had pretty plumage once -- enough of that,
 Better to smile on all that smile and show
 There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

 What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
 Honey of generation had betrayed,
 And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
 As recollection or the drug decide,
 Would think her son, did she but see that shape
 With sixty or more winters on its head,
 A compensation for the pang of his birth,
 Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

 Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
 Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
 Soldier Aristotle played the taws
 Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
 World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
 Fingered upon a fiddle-stick of strings
 What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
 Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

 Both nuns and mothers worship images,
 But those the candles light are not as those
 That animate a mother's reveries,
 But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
 And yet they too break hearts==O Presences
 That passion, piety or affection knows,
 And that all heavenly glory symbolise--
 O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;

 Labour is blossoming or dancing where
 The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
 Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
 Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil,
 O chesnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
 Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
 O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
 How can we know the dancer from the dance?


The Circus Animals' Desertion

 I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
 I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
 Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
 I must be satisfied with my heart, although
 Winter and summer till old age began
 My circus animals were all on show,
 Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
 Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

 What can I but enumerate old themes?
 First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
 Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
 Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
 Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
 That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
 But what cared I that set him on to ride,
 I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride?

 And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
 The Countess Cathleen was the name I gave it;
 She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
 But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
 I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
 Sop did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
 And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
 This dream itself had all my thought and love.

 An when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
 Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
 Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
 It was the dream itself enchanted me:
 Character isolated by a deed
 To engross the present and dominate memory.
 Players and painted stage took all my love,
 And not those thing that they were emblems of.

 Those masterful images because complete
 Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
 A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
 Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
 Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
 Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
 I must lie down where all the ladders start,
 In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.


Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill

 Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
 About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
 	The night above the dingle starry,
 		Time let me hail and climb
 	Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
 And honoured among the wagons I was prince of the apple
 		towns
 And once below a time I lordly had the trees an leaves
 		Trail with daisy and barley
	Down the rivers of the windfall light.

 And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
 About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
 	In the sun that is young once only,
		Time let me play and be
	Golden in the mercy of his means,
 And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the
 		calves
 Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
 		And the sabbath rang slowly
	In the pebbles of the holy streams.

 All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
 Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
 		air
 	And playing, lovely and watery
		And fire green as grass
	And nightly under the simple stars
 As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
 All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
 	Flying with the ricks and the horses
		Flashing into the dark.

 And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
 With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
 	Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
		The sky gathered again
	And the sun grew round that very day.
 So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
 In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
 	Out of the whinnying green stable
		On to the fields of praise.

 And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
 Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
 	In the sun born over and over,
		I ran my heedless ways,
	My wishes raced through the house high hay
 And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
 In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
 	Before the children green and golden
		Follow him out of grace,

 Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take
	me
 Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
 	In the moon that is always rising,
		Nor that riding to sleep
	I should hear him fly with the high fields
 And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
 Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
 		Time held me green and dying
	Though I sang in my chains like the sea.


A Refusal to Mourn

 Never until the mankind making
 Bird beast and flower
 Fathering and all humbling darkness
 Tells with silence the last light breaking
 And the still hour
 Is come to the sea tumbling in harness.

 And I must enter again the round
 Zion of the water bead
 And the synagogue of the ear of corn
 Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
 Or sow my salt seeds
 In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

 The majesty and burning of the child's death.
 I shall not murder
 The mankind of her going with a grave truth
 Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
 With and further
 Elegy of innocence and youth.

 Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
 Robed in the long friends,
 The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
 Secret by the unmourning water
 Of the riding Thames.
 After the first death, there is no other.


T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
	S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
	A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
	Questa fiamma staria senza pu scose.
	Ma perciccche glammai di questo fondo
	Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
	Senza tena d'infamia ti rispondo.

 Let us go then, you and I,
 When the evening is spread out against the sky
 Like a patient etherised upon a table;
 Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
 The muttering retreats
 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
 And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
 Streets that follow like a tedious argument
 Of insidious intent
 To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
 Let us go and make our visit.

 In the room the women come and go
 Talking of Michelangelo.

 The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
 Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
 Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
 Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
 Sipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
 And seeing that it was a soft October night,
 Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

 And indeed there will be time
 For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
 Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
 There will be time, there will be time
 To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
 And time for all the works and days of hands
 That lift and drop a question on your plate;

 Time for you and time for me,
 And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
 And for a hundred visions and revisions,
 Before the taking of a toast and tea.

 In the room the women come and go
 Talking of Michelangelo.

 And indeed there will be time
 To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
 Time to turn back and descend the stair,
 With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
 My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
 My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
 [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
 Do I dare
 Disturb the universe?
 In a minute there is time
 For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

 For I have known them all already, known them all--
 Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
 I know the voices dying with a dying fall
 Beneath the music form a farther room.
 	So how should I presume?

 And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
 And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
 When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
 Then how should I begin
 To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
 	And how should I presume?

 And I have known the arms already, known them all--
 Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
 [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
 Is it perfume from a dress
 That makes me so digress?
 Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  	And should I then presume?
	And how should I begin?

 	.	.	.

 Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
 Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

 I should have been a pair of ragged claws
 Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

 	.	.	.

 And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
 Smoothed by long fingers,
 Asleep...tired...or it malingers,
 Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
 Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
 Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
 Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
 	brought in upon a platter,
 I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
 I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
 And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
 	snicker,
 And in short, I was afraid.

 And would it have been worth it, after all,
 After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
 Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
 Would it have been worth while,
 To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
 To have squeezed the universe into a ball
 To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
 To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
 Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --
 If one, settling a pillow by her head,
 	Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
	That is not it, at all."

 And would it have been worth it, after all,
 Would it have been worth while,
 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
 After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
 	along the floor--
 And this, and so much more?--
 It is impossible to say just what I mean!
 But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
 	screen:
 Would it have been worth while
 If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
 And turning toward the window, should say:
 	"That is not it at all,
	That is not what I meant, at all."

	.	.	.

 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
 Am an attendant lord, one that will do
 To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
 Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
 Deferential, glad to be of use,
 Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
 Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
 At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
 Almost, at times, the Fool.

 I grow old... I grow old...
 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

 Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
 I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
 I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 I do not think that they will sing to me.

 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
 Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
 When the wind blows the water white and black.

 We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
 By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


A Song for Simeon

 Lord, they Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
 The winder sun creeps by the snow hills;
 The stubborn season has made stand.
 My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
 Like a feather on the back of my hand.
 Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
 Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

 Grant us they peace.
 I have walked many years in this city,
 Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
 have given and taken honour and ease.
 There went never any rejected from my door.
 Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children's
 	children?
 When the time of sorrow is come?
 They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home,
 Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords.

 Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
 Grant us thy peace.
 Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
 Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
 Now at this birth season of decease,
 Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
 Grant Israel's consolation
 To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

 According to thy word.
 They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
 With glory and derision,
 Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair.
 Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
 Not for me the ultimate vision.
 Grant me thy peace.
 (And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
 Thine also).
 I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
 I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
 Let they servant depart,
 Having seen thy salvation.


Thomas Hardy

During Wind and Rain

 	They sing their dearest songs--
	He, she, all of them-- yea,
	Treble and tenor and bass,
	  And one to play;
	With the candles mooning each face. . . .
	  Ah, no; the years 0!
 How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

 	They clear the creeping moss--
	Elders and juniors-- aye,
	Making the pathways neat
	  And the garden gay;
	And they build a shady seat. . . .
	  Ah, no; the years, the years;
 See, the white storm-birds wing across!

 	They are blithely breakfasting all--
	Men and maidens-- yea,
	Under the summer tree,
	  With a glimpse of the bay,
	While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .
	  Ah, no; the years O!
 And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

 	They change to a high new house,
	He, she, all of them-- aye,
	Clocks and carpets and chairs
	  On the lawn all day,
	And brightest things that are theirs. . . .
	  Ah, no; the years, the years;
 Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.


When I set out for Lyonnesse

 When I set out for Lyonnesse,
  A hundred miles away,
  The rime was on the spray,
 And starlight lit my lonesomeness
 When I set out for Lyonnesse
  A hundred miles away.

 What would bechance at Lyonnesse
  While I should sojourn there
  No prophet durst declare,
 Nor did the wisest wizard guess
 What would bechance at Lyonnesse
  While I should sojourn there.

 When I came back from Lyonnesse
  With magic in my eyes,
  All marked with mute surmise
 My radiance rare and fathomless,
 When I came back from Lyonnesse
  With magic in my eyes!


Afterwards

 When the Present has latched its postern behind my
   tremulous stay,
  And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like
   wings,
 Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours
   say,
  "He was a man who used to notice such things"?

 If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless
   blink,
  The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
 Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
  "To him this must have been a familiar sight."

 If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and
   warm,
  When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
 One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures
   should come to no harm,
  But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

 If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they
   stand at the door,
  Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
 Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no
   more,
  "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

 And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in
   the gloom,
  and a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
 Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
  "He hears it not now, but used to notice such
   things"?


In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

 Only a man harrowing clods
  In a slow silent walk
 With an old horse that stumbles and nods
  Half asleep as they stalk.

 Only thin smoke without flame
  From the heaps of couch-grass;
 Yet this will go onward the same
  Though Dynasties pass.

 Yonder a maid and her wight
  Come whispering by:
 War's annals will cloud into night
  Ere their story die.


Gerard Manley Hopkins

That Nature is a Herclitean Fire

 Cloud-puff ball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then
 	chevy on the air-
 built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they
 	throng; they glitter in marches.
 Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm
 	arches,
 Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and
 	pair.
 Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats
 	earth bare
 Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
 Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches,
 	starches
 Squadroned masks and manmarks tredmire toil there
 Footfettered in it. Million-fueled, nature's bonfire burns on.
 But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selved
 	spark
 Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!
 Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
 Drowned. O pity and indignation! Manshape, that shone
 Sheer off dissereval, a star, death blots black out; nor mark
 	Is any of him at all so stark
 But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the
 	Resurrection,
 A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days,
 	Dejection.
 		Across my foundering deck shone
 A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
 Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash;
 	In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
 I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
 This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal
 	diamond,
 		Is immortal diamond.


The Windhover:
 To Christ our Lord

 I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
  dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
	his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
 High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
 In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
   As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl
   	and gliding
   Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
 Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

 Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
 Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down silion
 Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.


Felix Randal

 Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended
 Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
 Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
 Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

 Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
 Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
 Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
 Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

 This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
 My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched they tears,
 Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

 How far from then forethought of, all they more boisterous years,
 When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
 Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!


No Worst, there is None

 No worst, there 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 ling-
 ering! 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.


I wake and feel the Fell of Dark

 I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
 What hours, O what black hours we have spent
 This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
 And more must in yet longer light's delay.
 	With witness I speak this. But where I say
 Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
 Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
 To dearest him that lives alas away.

  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.


Thou art indeed just, Lord
 Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verumtamen justa loquar
 ad te: Quare via impriorum prosperatur? &c.

 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, leaved how thick! laced 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.


Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death

 Because I could not stop for Death--
 He kindly stopped for me--
 The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
 And Immortality.

 We slowly drove--He knew no haste
 And I had put away
 My labor and my leisure too,
 For his Civility--

 We passed the School, where Children strove
 At recess--in the Ring--
 We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
 We passed the Setting Sun--

 Or rather--He passes Us--
 The Dews drew quivering and chill--
 For only Gossamer, my Gown--
 My Tippet--only Tulle--

 We paused before a House that seemed
 A Swelling of the Ground--
 The Roof was scarcely visible--
 The Cornice--in the Ground--

 Since then--'tis Centuries-- and yet
 Feels shorter than the Day
 I first surmised the Horses Heads
 Were toward Eternity--


I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
 And Mourners to and fro
 Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
 That Sense was breaking through--

 And when they all were seated,
 A Service, like a Drum
 Kept beating--beating--till I thought
 My Mind was going numb

 And then I heard them lift a Box
 And creak across my Soul
 With those same Boots of Lead, again,
 Then Space--began to toll,

 As all the Heavens were a Bell,
 And Being, but an Ear,
 And I, and Silence, some strange Race
 Wrecked, solitary, here--

 And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
 And I dropped down, and down--
 And hit a World, at every plunge,
 And Finished knowing--then--


The Soul selects her own Society

 The Soul selects her own Society--
 Then--shuts the Door--
 To her divine Majority--
 Present no more--

 Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
 At her low Gate--
 Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
 Upon her Mat--

 I've known her--from an ample nation--
 Choose One--
 Then--close the Valves of her attention--
 Like Stone--


Of all the Souls that stand create

 Of all the Souls that stand create--
 I have elected--One-
 When Sense from Spirit--files away--
 And Subterfuge--is done--
 When that which is--and that which was--
 Apart--intrinsic--stand--
 And this brief Tragedy of Flesh--
 Is shifted--like a Sand--
 When Figures show their royal Front--
 And Mists--are carved away,
 Behold the Atom--I preferred--
 To all the lists of Clay!


At Half past Three

 At Half past Three, a single Bird
 Unto a silent Sky
 Propounded but a single term
 Of cautious melody.

 At Half past Four, Experiment
 Had subjugated test
 And lo, Her silver Principle
 Supplanted all the rest.

 At Half past Seven, Element
 Nor Implement, be seen--
 And Place was where the Presence was
 Circumference between.


Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Choric Song of the Lotos-Eaters

  There is sweet music here that softer falls
  Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
  Or night-dews on still waters between walls
  Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
  Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
  Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
  Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
  Here are cool mosses deep,
  And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
  And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
  And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep."



  Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
  And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
  While all things else have rest from weariness?
    All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
  We only toil, who are the first of things,
  And make perpetual moan,
  Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
  Nor ever fold our wings,
  And cease from wanderings,
  Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
  Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
  "There is no joy but calm!"
  Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?



  Lo! in the middle of the wood,
  The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
  With winds upon the branch, and there
  Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
  Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
  Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
  Falls, and floats adown the air.
  Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
  The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
  Drops in a silent autumn night.
  All its allotted length of days
  The flower ripens in its place,
  Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
  Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.



  Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
  Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
  Death is the end of life; ah, why
  Should life all labour be?
  Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
  And in a little while our lips are dumb.
  Let us alone. What is it that will last?
  All things are taken from us, and become
  Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
  Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
  To war with evil? Is there any peace
  In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
  All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
  In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
  Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.



  How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
 With half-shut eyes ever to seem
 Falling asleep in a half-dream!
 To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
 Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
 To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
 Eating the Lotos day by day,
 To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
 And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
 To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
 To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
 To muse and brood and live again in memory,
 With those old faces of our infancy
 Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
 Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!



 Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
 And dear the last embraces of our wives
 And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:
 For surely now our household hearths are cold,
 Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
 And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
 Or else the island princes over-bold
 Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
 Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
 And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
 Is there confusion in the little isle?
 Let what is broken so remain.
 The Gods are hard to reconcile:
 'Tis hard to settle order once again.
 There is confusion worse than death,
 Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
 Long labour unto aged breath,
 Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
 And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.



 But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
 How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
 With half-dropt eyelid still,
 Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
 To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
 His waters from the purple hill--
 To hear the dewy echoes calling
 From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--
 To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
 Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
 Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
 Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.



 The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
 The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
 All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
 Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
 Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
 We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
 Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
 Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
 Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
 In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
 On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
 For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
 Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
 Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
 Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
 Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
 Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
 But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
 Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
 Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
 Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
 Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
 Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
 Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whisper'd--down in hell
 Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
 Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
 Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
 Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
 O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.


John Keats

Ode to a Nightingale

 1.
 My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
 Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
 One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
 Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
 But being too happy in thine happiness,--
 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
 In some melodious plot
 Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

 2.
 O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
 Tasting of Flora and the country green,
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
 O for a beaker full of the warm South,
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
 And purple-stained mouth;
 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

 3.
 Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
 What thou among the leaves hast never known,
 The weariness, the fever, and the fret
 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
 Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
 Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
 And leaden-eyed despairs,
 Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
 Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

 4.
 Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
 Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
 But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
 Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
 Already with thee! tender is the night,
 And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
 Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
 But here there is no light,
 Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

 5.
 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
 Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
 And mid-May's eldest child,
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

 6.
 Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
 I have been half in love with easeful Death,
 Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
 To take into the air my quiet breath;
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
 In such an ecstasy!
 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
 To thy high requiem become a sod.

 7.
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
 No hungry generations tread thee down;
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard
 In ancient days by emperor and clown:
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
 The same that oft-times hath
 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

 8.
 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
 To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
 Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
 As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
 Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
 Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
 Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
 In the next valley-glades:
 Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
 Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?


Ode on a Grecian Urn

 1.
 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
 Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
 Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
 Of deities or mortals, or of both,
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
 What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
         What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
 What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

 2.
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
 Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
 Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
 Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
 Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

 3.
 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
 And, happy melodist, unwearied,
 For ever piping songs for ever new;
 More happy love! more happy, happy love!
 For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
 For ever panting, and for ever young;
 All breathing human passion far above,
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

 4.
 Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
 To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
 And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
 What little town by river or sea shore,
 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
 Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
 And, little town, thy streets for evermore
 Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

 5.
 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
 Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
 With forest branches and the trodden weed;
 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
 When old age shall this generation waste,
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
 Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
 know on earth, and all ye need to know.


La Belle Dame sans Merci

 O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
   Alone and palely loitering?
 The sedge his wither'd from the lake,
   And no birds sing.

 O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
   So haggard and so woe-begone?
 The squirrel's granary is full,
   And the harvest's done.

 I see a lilly on thy brow,
   With anguish moist and fever dew,
 And on thy cheeks a fading rose
   Fast withereth too.

 I met a lady in the meads,
   Full beautiful--a faery's child,
 Her hair was long,her foot was light,
   And her eyes were wild.

 I made a garland for her head,
   And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
 She look'd at me as she did love,
   And made sweet moan.

 I set her on my pacing steed,
   And nothing else saw all day long,
 For sidelong would she bend, and sing
   A faery's song.

 Sh found me roots of relish sweet,
   And honey wild, and manna dew,
 And sure in language strange she said--
   "I love thee true".

 She took me to her elfin grot,
   And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
 And there I shut her wild wild eyes
   With kisses four.

 And there she lulled me asleep,
   And there I dream'd--Ah! woe betide!
 The latest dream I ever dream'd
   On the cold hiss side.

 I saw pale kings and princes too,
   Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
 They cried--"La belle Dame sans Merce
   Hath thee in thrall!"

 I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
   With horrid warning gaped wide,
 And I awoke and found me here,
   On the cold hill's side.

 And this is why I sojourn here,
   Alone and palely loitering,
 Though the sedge has wither'd from the lake,
   And no birds sing.


Terror of Death

 When I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
 Before high-piled books in charact'ry,
  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
 When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
 And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
 And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
  That I shall never look upon thee more,
 Never have relish in the faery power
  Of unreflecting love!--then on the shore
 Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
 Till love and fame to nothingness sink.


Bright Star! Would I were

 Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art-
  Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
 And watching, with eternal lids apart,
  Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
 The moving waters at their priestlike tast
  Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
 Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
  Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
 No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
  Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening brest,
 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
  Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
 And so live ever-or else swoon to death.


On the Sea

 It keeps eternal whisperings around
   Desolute shores, and with its mighty swell
   Gluts twice then thousand caverns, till the spell
 Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
 Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
   That scarcely will the very smallest shell
   Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,
 When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
 Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired,
   Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
     Oh ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,
     Or fed too much with cloying melody,--
     Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
 Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!


Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
 The winged seeds, where thy lie cold and low,
 Each like a corpse within its grave, until
 Thine azure sister of the Spring shal blow
 Her clarion o'er the dreamine earth, and fill
 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
 With living hues and odours plain and hill:
 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
 On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
 Of the horizon to the zenith's height
 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
 Of the dying year, to which this closing night
 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
 Valuted with all thy congregated might
 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
 Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
 So sweet, sthe sense faints picturing them! Thou
 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
 A wave to pant beneath thy powe, and share
 The impulse of thy strength, only less free
 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
 i were as in my boyhood, and could be
 The comrade of thy wnaderings over Heaven,
 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
 Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
 A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
 What if my leaves are falling like its own!
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
 Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
 And, by the incantation of this verse
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth
 The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?


Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples

  The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
   The waves are dancing fast and bright,
  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
   The purple noon's transparent might,
   The breath of the moist earth is light,
  Around its unexpanded buds;
   Like many a voice of one delight,
  The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
 The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

  I see the Deep's untrampled floor
   With green and pruple seaweeds strown;
  I see the waves upon teh shore,
   Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
   I sit upon the sands alone,--
  The lightning of the noontide ocean
   Is flashing round me, and a tone
  Arises from its measured motion,
 How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

  Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
   Nor peace within nor calm around,Nor that content surpassing wealth
    The sage in meditation found,
    And walked with inward glory crowned--
   Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
    Others I see whom these surround--
   Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;--
 To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

  Yet now despair itself is mild,
   Even as the winds and waters are;
  I could lie down like a tired child,
   And weep away the life of care
   Which I have borne and yet must bear,
  Till death like sleep might steal on me,
   And I might feel in the warm air
  My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
 Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

  Some might lament that I were cold,
   As I, when this sweet day is gone,
  Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
   Insults with this untimely moan;
   They might lament--for I am one
  Whom men love not,--and yet regret,
   Unlike this day, which, when the sun
  Shall on its stainless glory set,
 Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.


Ozymandias

 I met a traveller from an antique land
 Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
 half sunk, a shatttered visage lies, whose frown,
 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
 Tell that its sculptor wellthose passions read
 Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
 The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
 And on the pedestal these words appear:
 "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.


William Wordsworth

Lines composed a few miles above
Tintern Abbey

    And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
 With many recognitions dim and faint,
 And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
 the picture of the mind revives again:
 While here I stand, not only with the sense
 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
 That in this moment there is life and food
 For future years. And so I dare to hope,
 Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
 I came among these hills; when like a roe
 I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
 Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
 Wherever nature led: more like a man
 Flying form something that he dreads than one
 Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
 (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
 And their glad animal movements all gone by)
 To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
 What then I was. The sounding cataract
 Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me
 An appetite; a feeling and a love,
 That had no need of a remoter charm,
 By thought supplied, nor any interest
 Unborrowed from the eye.-- That time is past,
 And all its aching joys are now no more,
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
 Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
 Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned
 To look on nature, not as ii the hour
 Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
 The still, sad music of humanity,
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
 Of something far more deeply interfused,
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
 And the round ocean and the living air,
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
 A motion and a spirit, that impels
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
 A lover of the meadows and the woods,
 And mountains; and of all that we behold
 From this green earth; of all the mighty world
 Of eye, and ear, -- both what they half create,
 And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
 In nature and the language of the sense
 the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
 Of all my moral being.
 			Nor perchance,
 If I were not thus taught, should I the more
 Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
 For thou art with me here upon the banks
 Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
 My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
 The language of my former heart, and read
 My former pleasures in the shooting lights
 Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
 May I behold in thee what I was once,
 My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
 Knowing that Nature never did betray
 The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
 Through all the years of this our life, to lead
 from joy to joy: for she can so inform
 The mind that is within us, so impress
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
 Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men,
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
 The dreary intercourse of daily life,
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
 Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
 Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
 And let the misty mountain-winds be free
 To blow against thee: and, in after years,
 When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
 Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
 shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
 Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
 For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
 if solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
 Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
 Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
 And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--
 If I should be where I no more can hear
 Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
 Of past existence-- wilt thou then forget
 That on the banks of this delightful stream
 We stood together; and that I, so long
 A worshipper of Nature, hither came
 Unwearied in that service: rather say
 With warmer love-- oh! with far deeper zeal
 Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget
 That after many wanderings, many years
 Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
 And this green pastoral landscape, where to me
 More dear, both for themselves and for they sake!



Loud is the Vale

 Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up
 With which she speaks when storms are gone,
 A mighty unison of streams!
 Of all her Voices, One!

 Loud is the Vale; -- this inland Depth
 In peace is roaring lie the Sea;
 Yon star upon the mountain-top
 Is listening quietly.

 Sad was I, even to pain deprest,
 Importunate and heavy load!
 the Comforter hath found me here,
 Upon this lonely road;

 And many thousands now are sad--
 Wait the fulfilment of their fear;
 For he must die who is their stay,
 Their glory disappear.

 A Power is passing from the earth
 To breathless Nature's dark abyss;
 But when the great and good depart
 What is it more than this--

 That Man, who is from God sent forth,
 Doth yet again to God return? --
 Such ebb and flow must ever be,
 Then wherefore should we mourn?


Surprised by Joy

 Surprised by joy--impatient as the Wind
 I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
 But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
 That spot which no vicissitude can find?
 Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
 But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
 Even for the least division of an hour,
 Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
 To my most grievous loss!-- That thought's return
 Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
 Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
 Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
 That neither present time, nor years unborn
 Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.


O Friend! I know not

 O Friend! I know not which way I must look
 For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
 To think that now our life is only drest
 For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
 Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook
 In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
 The wealthiest man among us is the best:
 No grandeur now in nature or in book
 Delights us. Rapine, avarice expense,
 This is idolatry; and these we adore:
 Plain living and high thinking are no more:
 The homely beauty of the good old cause
 Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
 And pure religion breathing household laws.


Alexander Pope

Excerpts from "The Rape of the Lock"

Canto I
 	And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,
 Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.
 First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,
 With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow're.
 A heav'nly Image in the glass appears,
 To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
 Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,
 Trembling, begins the sacred rites of Pride.
 Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here
 The various off'rings of the world appear;
 From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
 And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.
 This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
 And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
 The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,
 Transform'd to combs, the speckled, and the white.
 Here flies of pins extend their shining rows,
 Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux,
 Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms;
 The fair each moment rises in her charms,
 Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,
 And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
 Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
 And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
 The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
 These set the head, and those divide the hair,
 Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
 And Betty's prais'd for labours not her own.


Canto II
 	But now secure the painted vessel glides,
 The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides:
 While melting music steals upon the sky,
 And soften'd sounds along the waters die;
 Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play,
 Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay.
 All but the Sylph--with careful thoughts opprest,
 Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast.
 He summons strait his Denizens of air;
 The lucid squadrons round the sails repair;
 Soft o'er the shrouds of aerial whispers breathe,
 That seem'd but Zephyrs to the train beneath.
 Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,
 Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;
 Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
 Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light.
 Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
 Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew,
 Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,
 Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,
 While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,
 Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.

Canto III
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
 Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
 There stands a structure of majestic frame,
 Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
 Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
 Of foreign Tyrants, and of Nymphs at home;
 Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
 Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes Tea.
 	Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,
 To taste awhile the pleasures of a Court;
 In various talk th' instructive hours they past,
 Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
 One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
 And one describes a charming Indian screen;
 A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
 At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
 Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
 With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
 	Mean while, declining from the noon of day,
 The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
 The hungry Judges soon the sentence sign,
 And wretches hang that jury-men may dine;
 The merchant from th'Exchange returns in peace,
 And the long labours of the Toilet cease.
	.	.	.	.	.
 For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd,
 The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;
 On shining Altars of Japan they raise
 The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
 While China's earth receives the smoaking tide:
 At once they gratify their scent and taste,
 And frequent cups prolong the rich repaste.
 Strait hover round the Fair her airy band;
 Some, as she sipp'd, the fuming liqour fann'd,
 Some o'er her lap their careful plumes display'd,
 Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.
 Coffee (which makes the politician wise,
 And see thro' all things with his half-shut eyes)
 Sent up in vapours to the Baron's brain
 New stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.
 Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
 Fear the just Gods, and think of Scylla's Fate!
 Chang'd to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
 She dearly pays for Nisus' injur'd hair!
 	But when to mischief mortals bend thier will,
 How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
 Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
 A two-edg'd weapon from her shining case:
 So Ladies in Romance assist their Knight,
 Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
 He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends
 The little engine on his fingers' ends;
 This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
 As o'er the gragrant steams she bens her head.
 Swift to the Lock a thousand Sprites repair,
 A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair;
 And thrice they twitch'd the diamond in her ear;
 Thrice she look'd back, and thrice the foe drew near.
 Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought
 The close recesses of the Virgin's thought;
 As on the nosegay in her breast reclin'd,
 He watch'd th'Ideas rising in her mind,
 Sudden he view'd, in spite of all her art,
 An earthly Lover lurking at her heart.
 Amaz'd, confus'd, he found his pow'r expir'd,
 Resign'd to fate, and with a sigh retir'd.
 	The Peer now spreads the glitt'ring Forfex wide,
 T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
 Ev'n then, before the fatal engine clos'd,
 A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
 Fate urg'd the sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
 (But airy substance soon unites again)
 The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
 From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
 	Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes,
 And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
 Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,
 When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last;
 Or when rich China vessels, fall'n from high,
 In glitt'ring dust, and painted fragments lie!

Canto IV
 And shall the prize, th' inestimable prize,
 Expos'd thro' crystal to the gazing eyes,
 And heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays,
 On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
 Sooner shall grass in Hyde-park Circus grow,
 And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
 Sooner let earth, air, sea, to Chaos fall,
 Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!
 	She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
 And bids her Beau demand the precious hairs:
 (Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain,
 And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
 With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
 He first the snuff-box open'd, then the case,
 And thus broke out--'My Lord, why, what the devil?
 'Z-ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
 'Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
 'Give her the hair'--he spoke, and rapp'd his box.
 	It grieves me much (reply'd the Peer again)
 Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.
 But by this Lock, this sacred Lock I swear,
 (Which never more shall join its parted hair;
 Which never more its honours shall renew,
 Clip'd from the lovely head where late it grew)
 That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
 This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear.
 He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
 The long-contended honours of her head.

Canto V
 To arms, to arms! the fierce Virago cries,
 And swift as lightning to the combat files.
 Al side in parties, and begin th' attack;
 Fans clap, silks russle, and though whalebones crack;
 Heroes and Heroines shouts confus'dly rise,
 And base, and treble voices strike the skies.
 No common weapons in their hands are found,
 Like Gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.
	So when bold Homes makes the Gods engage,
 And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage;
 'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;
 And all Olympus rings with loud alarms:
 Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around,
 Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:
 Earth shakes her nodding towr's, the ground gives way,
 And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
 	Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
 Clap'd his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
 Prop'd on their bodin spears, the Sprites survey
 The growing combat, or assist the fray.
 	While thro' the press enrag'd Thalestris flies,
 And scatters death around from both her eyes,
 A Beau and Witling perish'd in the throng,
 One dy'd in metaphor, and one in song.
 'O cruel nymph! a living death I bear,'
 Cry'd Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
 A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
 'Those eyes are made so killing'--was his last.
 Thus on Maeander's flow'ry margin lies
 Th'expiring Swan, and as he sings he dies.
 When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
 Chloe stepp'd in, and kill'd him with a frown;
 She smil'd to see the doughty hero slain,
 But, at her smile, the Beau reviv'd again.
 	Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
 Weighs the Men's wits against the Lady's hair;
 The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
 At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
 	See fierce Belinda on the Baron flies,
 With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
 Nor fear'd the Chief th' unequal fight to try,
 Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
 But this bold Lord sith manly strength endu'd,
 She with one finger and a thumb subdu'd:
 Just where breath of life his nostrils drew,
 A charge of Snuff the wily virgin threw;
 The Gnomes direct, to ev'ry atom just,
 The pungent grains of titillating dust.
 Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
 And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.


John Dryden

From "Mac Flecknoe"

 All human things are subject to decay,
 And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
 This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
 Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
 In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
 Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
 This aged prince now flourishing in peace,
 And blest with issue of a large increase,
 Worn out with business, did at length debate
 To settle the succession of the State:
 And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit
 To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;
 Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he
 Should only rule, who most resembles me:
 Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
 Mature in dullness from his tender years.
 Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
 Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
 The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
 But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
 Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
 Strike through and make a lucid interval;
 But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
 His rising fogs prevail upon the day:
 Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye,
 And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:
 Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
 And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
 Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
 Thou last great prophet of tautology:
 Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,
 Was sent before but to prepare thy way;
 And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came
 To teach the nations in thy greater name.
 My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung
 When to King John of Portugal I sung,
 Was but the prelude to that glorious day,
 When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way,
 With well tim'd oars before the royal barge,
 Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge;


From "Absalom and Architophel"

     Of these the false Achitophel was first:
 A name to all succeeding ages curst.
 For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
 Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit:
 Restless, unfixt in principles and place;
 In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace.
 A fiery soul, which working out its way,
 Fretted the pigmy-body to decay:
 And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay.
 A daring pilot in extremity;
 Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
 He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
 Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
 Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
 Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
 Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
 Punish a body which he could not please;
 Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
 And all to leave, what with his toil he won
 To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
 Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
 And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
 In friendship false, implacable in hate:
 Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
 To compass this, the triple bond he broke;
 The pillars of the public safety shook:
 And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke.
 Then, seiz'd with fear, yet still affecting fame,
 Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name.
 So easy still it proves in factious times,
 With public zeal to cancel private crimes:
 How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
 Where none can sin against the people's will:
 Where crowds can wink; and no offence be known,
 Since in another's guilt they find their own.
 Yet, fame deserv'd, no enemy can grudge;
 The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
 In Jewish courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin
 With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean:
 Unbrib'd, unsought, the wretched to redress;
 Swift of dispatch, and easy of access.
 Oh, had he been content to serve the crown,
 With virtues only proper to the gown;
 Or, had the rankness of the soil been freed
 From cockle, that opprest the noble seed:
 David, for him his tuneful harp had strung,
 And heav'n had wanted one immortal song.
 But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand;
 And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land:


John Milton

Lycidas

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunatly drown'd in his
Passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretels the ruine of our
corrupted Clergy then in their height.

 Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
 Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
 I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
 And with forc'd fingers rude,
 Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
 Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
 Compels me to disturb your season due:
 For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
 Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
 Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
 He must not flote upon his watry bear
 Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
 Without the meed of som melodious tear.
 	Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
 That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
 Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
 Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
 So may som gentle Muse
 With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn,
 And as he passes turn,
 And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd.
 For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
 Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
 	Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd
 Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
 We drove a field, and both together heard
 What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
 Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
 Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright
 Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel,
 Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute,
 Temper'd to th'Oaten Flute;
 Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,
 From the glad sound would not be absent long,
 And old Damaetas lov'd to hear our song.
	But O the heavy charge, now thou art gon,
 Now thou art gon, and never must return!
 Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,
 With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown
 And all their echoes mourn.
 The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,
 Shall now no more be seen,
 Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.
 As killing as the Canker to the Rose,
 Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze,
 Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear,
 When first the White thorn blows;
 Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.
 	Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep
 Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
 For neither were ye playing on the steep,
 Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly,
 Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
 Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream:
 Ay me, I fondly dream!
 Had ye bin there--for what could that have don?
 What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore,
 The Muse her self, for her inchanting son
 Whom Universal nature did lament,
 When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
 His goary visage down the stream was sent,
 Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian Shore.
 	Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
 To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
 And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
 Were it not better don as others use,
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
 Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
 (That last infirmity of Noble mind)
 To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes;
 But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
 Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,
 And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
 Phaebus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;
 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
 Nor in the glistering foil
 Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies,
 But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
 And perfet witness of all judging Jove;
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
 Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.
 	O Fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd floud,
 Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with voocall reeds,
 That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
 But now my Oate proceeds,
 And listens to the Herald of the Sea
 That came in Neptune's plea,
 He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds,
 What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
 And question'd every gust of rugged wings
 That blows from off each beaked Promontory,
 They knew not of his story,
 And sage Hippotads their answer brings,
 That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,
 The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
 Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
 It was that fatall and perfidious Bark
 Built in th'eclipse and rigg'd with curses dark,
 That sunk so low that scared head of thine.
 	Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow,
 His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge,
 Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
 Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.
 Ah; who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
 Last came, adn last did go,
 The Pilot of the Galilean like,
 Two many Keyes he bore of metals twain,
 (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
 He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake,
 How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain,
 Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
 Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
 Of other care they little reck'ning make,
 Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
 Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
 A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least
 That to the fiathfull Herdmans art belongs!
 What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
 And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
 Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
 The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
 But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
 Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
 Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
 But that two-handed engine at the door,
 Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
 	Returns Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
 That shrunk thy stream; Return Sicilian Must,
 And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast
 Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues.
 Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use,
 Of shades and wonton winds, and gushing brooks
 On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks,
 Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes,
 That on the green terf suck the honied showres,
 And purple all the ground with vernal flowres.
 Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
 The tufted Crow-tow, and pale Gessamine,
 The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,
 The glowing Violet.
 The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine,
 With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
 Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
 And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
 To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.
 For so to interpose a little ease,
 Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
 Ay me! What thee the shores, and sounding Seas
 Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,
 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
 Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
 Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
 Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd
 Sleep'st  by the fable of Bellerus old,
 Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
 Looks toward namancos and Bayona's hold;
 Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.
 And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.
 	Weep no more, woful Shepherds, weep no more,
 For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
 Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
 So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
 And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
 Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves,
 Where other groves, and other streams along,
 With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves,
 And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,
 In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
 There entertain him all the Saints above,
 In solemn troops, and sweet Societies
 That sing, and singing in their glory move,
 And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
 Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more;
 Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,
 In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
 To al that wander in that perilous flood.
 	Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th'Okes and rills,
 While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
 He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
 With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
 And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
 And now wasdropt into the Western bay;
 At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
 To-morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.


How Soon hath Time

 How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
  Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer!
  My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
  But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
 Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
  That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,
  And inward ripenes doth much less appear,
  That som more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
 Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
  It shall be still in strictest measure eev'n
  To that same lot, however mean, or high,
 Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n;
  All is, if I have grace to use it so,
  As ever in my great task Masters eye.


When I Consider

 When I consider how my light is spent,
  E'er half my days, in this dark world and wide,
  And that one Talent which is death to hide,
  Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present
  My true account, least he returning chide,
  Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
  I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
 That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
  Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
  Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
 Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
  And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
  They also serve who only stand and waite.


Avange O Lord

 Avenge O Lord thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
  Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
  Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
  When all our Fathers worship't Stocks and Stones,
 Forget not: in thy book record their groanes
  Who were thy Sheep and in their antient Fold
  Slayn by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
  Mother with Infant down the Rocks. Their moans
 The Vales redoubl'd to the Hills, and they
  To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
  O'er all th'Italian fields where still doth sway
 The triple Tyrant: that from these may grow
  A hunder'd-fold, who having learnt thy way
  Early may fly the Babylonian wo.


Paradise Lost, Book 1

 Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
 Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
 Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
 Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
 That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
 In the beginning how the heavens and earth
 Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
 Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
 Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
 Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
 That with no middle flight intends to soar
 Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
 And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
 Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
 Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
 Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
 Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss,
 And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
 Illumine, what is low raise and support;
 That, to the height of this great argument,
 I may assert Eternal Providence,
 And justify the ways of God to men.
   Say first--for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
 Nor the deep tract of Hell--say first what cause
 Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
 Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
 From their Creator, and transgress his will
 For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
 Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
   Th' infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
 Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
 The mother of mankind, what time his pride
 Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
 Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
 To set himself in glory above his peers,
 He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
 If he opposed, and with ambitious aim
 Against the throne and monarchy of God,
 Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
 With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
 Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
 With hideous ruin and combustion, down
 To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
 In adamantine chains and penal fire,
 Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.
   Nine times the space that measures day and night
 To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
 Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
 Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
 Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
 Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
 Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
 That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
 At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
 The dismal situation waste and wild.
 A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
 As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
 No light; but rather darkness visible
 Served only to discover sights of woe,
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
 And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
 That comes to all, but torture without end
 Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
 With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
 Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
 For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
 In utter darkness, and their portion set,
 As far removed from God and light of Heaven
 As from the centre thrice to th' utmost pole.
 Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!
 There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
 With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
 He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
 One next himself in power, and next in crime,
 Long after known in Palestine, and named
 Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,
 And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
 Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:--
   "If thou beest he--but O how fallen! how changed
 From him who, in the happy realms of light
 Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
 Myriads, though bright!--if he whom mutual league,
 United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
 And hazard in the glorious enterprise
 Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
 In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
 From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved
 He with his thunder; and till then who knew
 The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
 Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
 Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
 Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
 And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
 That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
 And to the fierce contentions brought along
 Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
 That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
 His utmost power with adverse power opposed
 In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
 And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
 All is not lost--the unconquerable will,
 And study of revenge, immortal hate,
 And courage never to submit or yield:
 And what is else not to be overcome?
 That glory never shall his wrath or might
 Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
 With suppliant knee, and deify his power
 Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
 Doubted his empire--that were low indeed;
 That were an ignominy and shame beneath
 This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
 And this empyreal sybstance, cannot fail;
 Since, through experience of this great event,
 In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
 We may with more successful hope resolve
 To wage by force or guile eternal war,
 Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
 Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
 Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven."
   So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
 Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
 And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:--
   "O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers
 That led th' embattled Seraphim to war
 Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
 Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King,
 And put to proof his high supremacy,
 Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate,
 Too well I see and rue the dire event
 That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
 Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
 In horrible destruction laid thus low,
 As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
 Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
 Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
 Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
 Here swallowed up in endless misery.
 But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
 Of force believe almighty, since no less
 Than such could have o'erpowered such force as ours)
 Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
 Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
 That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
 Or do him mightier service as his thralls
 By right of war, whate'er his business be,
 Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
 Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?
 What can it the avail though yet we feel
 Strength undiminished, or eternal being
 To undergo eternal punishment?"
   Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend replied:--
 "Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
 Doing or suffering: but of this be sure--
 To do aught good never will be our task,
 But ever to do ill our sole delight,
 As being the contrary to his high will
 Whom we resist. If then his providence
 Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
 Our labour must be to pervert that end,
 And out of good still to find means of evil;
 Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps
 Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
 His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
 But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
 His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
 Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
 Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
 The fiery surge that from the precipice
 Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
 Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
 Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
 To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
 Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn
 Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
 Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
 The seat of desolation, void of light,
 Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
 Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
 From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
 There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
 And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
 Consult how we may henceforth most offend
 Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
 How overcome this dire calamity,
 What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
 If not, what resolution from despair."
   Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
 With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
 That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
 Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
 Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
 As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
 Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
 Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
 By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
 Leviathan, which God of all his works
 Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream.
 Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
 The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
 With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
 Moors by his side under the lee, while night
 Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
 So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,
 Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
 Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
 And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
 Left him at large to his own dark designs,
 That with reiterated crimes he might
 Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
 Evil to others, and enraged might see
 How all his malice served but to bring forth
 Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
 On Man by him seduced, but on himself
 Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
   Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
 His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
 Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and,rolled
 In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
 Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
 Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
 That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
 He lights--if it were land that ever burned
 With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
 And such appeared in hue as when the force
 Of subterranean wind transprots a hill
 Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
 Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
 And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
 Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
 And leave a singed bottom all involved
 With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
 Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;
 Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
 As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
 Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
   "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
 Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat
 That we must change for Heaven?--this mournful gloom
 For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
 Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
 What shall be right: farthest from him is best
 Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
 Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
 Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
 Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
 Receive thy new possessor--one who brings
 A mind not to be changed by place or time.
 The mind is its own place, and in itself
 Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
 What matter where, if I be still the same,
 And what I should be, all but less than he
 Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
 We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
 Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
 Here we may reigh secure; and, in my choice,
 To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
 Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
 But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
 Th' associates and co-partners of our loss,
 Lie thus astonished on th' oblivious pool,
 And call them not to share with us their part
 In this unhappy mansion, or once more
 With rallied arms to try what may be yet
 Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?"
   So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
 Thus answered:--"Leader of those armies bright
 Which, but th' Omnipotent, none could have foiled!
 If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
 Of hope in fears and dangers--heard so oft
 In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
 Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults
 Their surest signal--they will soon resume
 New courage and revive, though now they lie
 Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
 As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
 No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!"
   He scare had ceased when the superior Fiend
 Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
 Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
 Behind him cast. The broad circumference
 Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
 At evening, from the top of Fesole,
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
 Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
 His spear--to equal which the tallest pine
 Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
 Of some great ammiral, were but a wand--
 He walked with, to support uneasy steps
 Over the burning marl, not like those steps
 On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime
 Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
 Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
 Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
 His legions--Angel Forms, who lay entranced
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
 In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
 High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
 Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
 From the safe shore their floating carcases
 And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
 Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
 Under amazement of their hideous change.
 He called so loud that all the hollow deep
 Of Hell resounded:--"Princes, Potentates,
 Warriors, the Flower of Heaven--once yours; now lost,
 If such astonishment as this can seize
 Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
 After the toil of battle to repose
 Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
 To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
 Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
 To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds
 Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
 With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
 His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern
 Th' advantage, and, descending, tread us down
 Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
 Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
 Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!"
   They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
 Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
 On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
 Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
 Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
 In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
 Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed
 Innumerable. As when the potent rod
 Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
 Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud
 Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
 That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
 Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile;
 So numberless were those bad Angels seen
 Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
 'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
 Till, as a signal given, th' uplifted spear
 Of their great Sultan waving to direct
 Their course, in even balance down they light
 On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:
 A multitude like which the populous North
 Poured never from her frozen loins to pass
 Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
 Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
 Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
 Forthwith, form every squadron and each band,
 The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
 Their great Commander--godlike Shapes, and Forms
 Excelling human; princely Dignities;
 And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,
 Though on their names in Heavenly records now
 Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
 By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
 Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
 Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the earth,
 Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man,
 By falsities and lies the greatest part
 Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
 God their Creator, and th' invisible
 Glory of him that made them to transform
 Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
 With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
 And devils to adore for deities:
 Then were they known to men by various names,
 And various idols through the heathen world.
   Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
 Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
 At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth
 Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
 While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof?
   The chief were those who, from the pit of Hell
 Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix
 Their seats, long after, next the seat of God,
 Their altars by his altar, gods adored
 Among the nations round, and durst abide
 Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned
 Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed
 Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
 Abominations; and with cursed things
 His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned,
 And with their darkness durst affront his light.
 First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
 Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;
 Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
 Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire
 To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
 Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain,
 In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
 Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
 Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
 Of Solomon he led by fraoud to build
 His temple right against the temple of God
 On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove
 The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
 And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell.
 Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moab's sons,
 From Aroar to Nebo and the wild
 Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
 And Horonaim, Seon's real, beyond
 The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines,
 And Eleale to th' Asphaltic Pool:
 Peor his other name, when he enticed
 Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
 To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
 Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
 Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
 Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate,
 Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell.
 With these came they who, from the bordering flood
 Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts
 Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names
 Of Baalim and Ashtaroth--those male,
 These feminine. For Spirits, when they please,
 Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
 And uncompounded is their essence pure,
 Not tried or manacled with joint or limb,
 Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
 Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
 Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
 Can execute their airy purposes,
 And works of love or enmity fulfil.
 For those the race of Israel oft forsook
 Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left
 His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
 To bestial gods; for which their heads as low
 Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
 Of despicable foes. With these in troop
 Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
 Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
 To whose bright image nigntly by the moon
 Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
 In Sion also not unsung, where stood
 Her temple on th' offensive mountain, built
 By that uxorious king whose heart, though large,
 Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
 To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
 Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
 The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
 In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
 While smooth Adonis from his native rock
 Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
 Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale
 Infected Sion's daughters with like heat,
 Whose wanton passions in the sacred proch
 Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
 His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
 Of alienated Judah. Next came one
 Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
 Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off,
 In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,
 Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers:
 Dagon his name, sea-monster,upward man
 And downward fish; yet had his temple high
 Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
 Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
 And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.
 Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
 Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
 Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
 He also against the house of God was bold:
 A leper once he lost, and gained a king--
 Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
 God's altar to disparage and displace
 For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
 His odious offerings, and adore the gods
 Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared
 A crew who, under names of old renown--
 Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train--
 With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused
 Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek
 Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
 Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape
 Th' infection, when their borrowed gold composed
 The calf in Oreb; and the rebel king
 Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan,
 Likening his Maker to the grazed ox--
 Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed
 From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke
 Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
 Belial came last; than whom a Spirit more lewd
 Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
 Vice for itself. To him no temple stood
 Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
 In temples and at altars, when the priest
 Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
 With lust and violence the house of God?
 In courts and palaces he also reigns,
 And in luxurious cities, where the noise
 Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
 And injury and outrage; and, when night
 Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
 Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
 Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
 In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
 Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.
   These were the prime in order and in might:
 The rest were long to tell; though far renowned
 Th' Ionian gods--of Javan's issue held
 Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth,
 Their boasted parents;--Titan, Heaven's first-born,
 With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
 By younger Saturn: he from mightier Jove,
 His own and Rhea's son, like measure found;
 So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete
 And Ida known, thence on the snowy top
 Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air,
 Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff,
 Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
 Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old
 Fled over Adria to th' Hesperian fields,
 And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost Isles.
   All these and more came flocking; but with looks
 Downcast and damp; yet such wherein appeared
 Obscure some glimpse of joy to have found their Chief
 Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost
 In loss itself; which on his countenance cast
 Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride
 Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
 Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised
 Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears.
 Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound
 Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared
 His mighty standard. That proud honour claimed
 Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall:
 Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled
 Th' imperial ensign; which, full high advanced,
 Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
 With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
 Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
 Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:
 At which the universal host up-sent
 A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
 Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
 All in a moment through the gloom were seen
 Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
 With orient colours waving: with them rose
 A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
 Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
 Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move
 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
 Of flutes and soft recorders--such as raised
 To height of noblest temper heroes old
 Arming to battle, and instead of rage
 Deliberate valour breathed, firm, and unmoved
 With dread of death to flight or foul retreat;
 Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage
 With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
 Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
 From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they,
 Breathing united force with fixed thought,
 Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed
 Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil. And now
 Advanced in view they stand--a horrid front
 Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise
 Of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield,
 Awaiting what command their mighty Chief
 Had to impose. He through the armed files
 Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse
 The whole battalion views--their order due,
 Their visages and stature as of gods;
 Their number last he sums. And now his heart
 Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength,
 Glories: for never, since created Man,
 Met such embodied force as, named with these,
 Could merit more than that small infantry
 Warred on by cranes--though all the giant brood
 Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined
 That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
 Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
 In fable or romance of Uther's son,
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
 And all who since, baptized or infidel,
 Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
 When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
 By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
 Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed
 Their dread Commander. He, above the rest
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
 Stood like a tower. His form had yet not lost
 All her original brightness, nor appeared
 Less than Archangel ruined, and th' excess
 Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen
 Looks through the horizontal misty air
 Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon,
 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
 On half the nations, and with fear of change
 Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
 Above them all th' Archangel: but his face
 Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
 Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
 Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
 Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast
 Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
 The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
 (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
 For ever now to have their lot in pain--
 Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
 Of Heaven, and from eteranl splendours flung
 For his revolt--yet faithful how they stood,
 Their glory withered; as, when heaven's fire
 Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines,
 With singed top their stately growth, though bare,
 Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared
 To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend
 From wing to wing, and half enclose him round
 With all his peers: attention held them mute.
 Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
 Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last
 Words interwove with sighs found out their way:--
   "O myriads of immortal Spirits! O Powers
 Matchless, but with th' Almighth!--and that strife
 Was not inglorious, though th' event was dire,
 As this place testifies, and this dire change,
 Hateful to utter. But what power of mind,
 Forseeing or presaging, from the depth
 Of knowledge past or present, could have feared
 How such united force of gods, how such
 As stood like these, could ever know repulse?
 For who can yet believe, though after loss,
 That all these puissant legions, whose exile
 Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend,
 Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?
 For me, be witness all the host of Heaven,
 If counsels different, or danger shunned
 By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
 Monarch in Heaven till then as one secure
 Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,
 Consent or custom, and his regal state
 Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed--
 Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
 Henceforth his might we know, and know our own,
 So as not either to provoke, or dread
 New war provoked: our better part remains
 To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
 What force effected not; that he no less
 At length from us may find, who overcomes
 By force hath overcome but half his foe.
 Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife
 There went a fame in Heaven that he ere long
 Intended to create, and therein plant
 A generation whom his choice regard
 Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven.
 Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
 Our first eruption--thither, or elsewhere;
 For this infernal pit shall never hold
 Celestial Spirits in bondage, nor th' Abyss
 Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
 Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired;
 For who can think submission? War, then, war
 Open or understood, must be resolved."
   He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew
 Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
 Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
 Far round illumined Hell. Highly they raged
 Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
 Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
 Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven.
   There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top
 Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire
 Shone with a glossy scurf--undoubted sign
 That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
 The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed,
 A numerous brigade hastened: as when bands
 Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed,
 Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field,
 Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on--
 Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
 From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
 Were always downward bent, admiring more
 The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
 Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
 In vision beatific. By him first
 Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
 Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
 Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
 For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
 Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
 And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
 That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
 Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
 Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell
 Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
 Learn how their greatest monuments of fame
 And strength, and art, are easily outdone
 By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
 What in an age they, with incessant toil
 And hands innumerable, scarce perform.
 Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
 That underneath had veins of liquid fire
 Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
 With wondrous art founded the massy ore,
 Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross.
 A third as soon had formed within the ground
 A various mould, and from the boiling cells
 By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook;
 As in an organ, from one blast of wind,
 To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.
 Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
 Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
 Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet--
 Built like a temple, where pilasters round
 Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
 With golden architrave; nor did there want
 Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven;
 The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon
 Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
 Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine
 Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat
 Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
 In wealth and luxury. Th' ascending pile
 Stood fixed her stately height, and straight the doors,
 Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
 Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth
 And level pavement: from the arched roof,
 Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
 Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
 With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
 As from a sky. The hasty multitude
 Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
 And some the architect. His hand was known
 In Heaven by many a towered structure high,
 Where sceptred Angels held their residence,
 And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King
 Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
 Each in his Hierarchy, the Orders bright.
 Nor was his name unheard or unadored
 In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
 Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
 From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
 Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn
 To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
 A summer's day, and with the setting sun
 Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star,
 On Lemnos, th' Aegaean isle. Thus they relate,
 Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
 Fell long before; nor aught aviled him now
 To have built in Heaven high towers; nor did he scape
 By all his engines, but was headlong sent,
 With his industrious crew, to build in Hell.
   Meanwhile the winged Heralds, by command
 Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony
 And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim
 A solemn council forthwith to be held
 At Pandemonium, the high capital
 Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called
 From every band and squared regiment
 By place or choice the worthiest: they anon
 With hundreds and with thousands trooping came
 Attended. All access was thronged; the gates
 And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall
 (Though like a covered field, where champions bold
 Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair
 Defied the best of Paynim chivalry
 To mortal combat, or career with lance),
 Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
 Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
 In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides.
 Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
 In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
 Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
 The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
 New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
 Their state-affairs: so thick the airy crowd
 Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given,
 Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
 In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons,
 Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
 Throng numberless--like that pygmean race
 Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves,
 Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
 Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
 Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
 Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
 Wheels her pale course: they, on their mirth and dance
 Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
 At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
 Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
 Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,
 Though without number still, amidst the hall
 Of that infernal court. But far within,
 And in their own dimensions like themselves,
 The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim
 In close recess and secret conclave sat,
 A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,
 Frequent and full. After short silence then,
 And summons read, the great consult began.


Andrew Marvell

Thoughts in a Garden

 How vainly men themselves amaze
 To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
 And their uncessant labours see
 Crown'd from some single herb or tree,
 Whose short and narrow-verged shade
 Does prudently their toils upbraid;
 While all the flowers and trees do close
 To weave the garlands of repose!

 Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
 And Innocence thy sister dear?
 Mistaken long, I sought you then
 In busy companies of men:
 Your sacred plants, if here below
 Only among the plants will grow:
 Society is all but rude
 To this delicious solitude.

 No white nor red was ever seen
 So amorous as this lovely green.
 fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
 cut in these trees their mistress' name:
 Little, alas! they know or heed
 How far these beauties hers exceed!
 Fair trees! wheres'e'er your barks I would
 No name shall but your own be found.

 When we have run our passions' heat,
 Love hither makes his best retreat:
 The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
 Still in a tree did end their race;
 Apollo hunted Daphne so
 Only that she might laurel grow;
 And Pan did after Syrinx speed
 Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

 What wondrous life in 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.

 Such was that happy Garden-state
 While man there walk'd without a mate:
 After a place so pure and sweet,
 What other help could yet be meet!
 But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
 To wander solitary there:
 Two paradises 'twere in one,
 To live in Paradise alone.

 How well the skilful gard'ner drew
 Of flowers and herbs this dial new!
 Where, from above, the milder sun
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
 And, as it works, th' industrious bee
 Computes its time as well as we.
 How could such sweet and wholesome hours
 be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers!


Henry Vaughan

The Retreate

 Happy those early dayes! when I
 Shin'd in my Angell-infancy.
 Before I understood this place
 Appointed for my second race,
 Or taught my soul to fancy ought
 But a white, Celestiall thought,
 When yet I had not walkt above
 A mile, or two, from my first love,
 And looking back (at that short space,)
 Could see a glimpse of his bright-face;
 When on some gilded Cloud, or flowre
 My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
 And in those weaker glories spy
 Some shadows of eternity;
 Before I taught my tongue to wound
 My Conscience with a sinfull sound,
 Or had the black art to dispence
 A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sense
 But felt through all this fleshly dresse
 Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
 	O how I long to travell back
 And tread again that ancient track!
 That I might once more reach that plaine,
 Where first I left my glorious traine,
 From whence th'Inlightned spirit sees
 That shady City of Palme trees;
 But (ah!) my soul with too much stay
 Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
 Some men a forward motion love,
 But I by backward steps would move,
 And when this dust falls to the urn
 In that state I came return.


The Showre

 'Twas so, I saw thy birth: That drowsie Lake
 From her faint bosome breath'd thee, the disease
 Of her sick waters, and Infectious Ease.
 	But, now at Even
	Too grosse for heaven,
 Thou fall'st in teares, and weep'st for thy mistake.

 Ah! It is so with me; oft have I prest
 Heaven with a lazie breath, but fruitles this
 Peirc'd not; Love only can with quick accesse
 	Unlock the way,
	When all else stray
 The smoke, and Exhalations of the brest.

 Yet, if as thou doest melt, and with thy traine
 Of drops make soft the Earth, my eyes could weep
 O'er my hard heart, that's bound up, and asleep,
 	Perhaps at last
	(Some such showres past,)
 My God would give a Sun-shine after raine.


Man

 	Weighing the stedfastness 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 flowrs
 		Early, aswel as late,
 Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs;

 	I would (said I) my God would give
 The staidness of these things to man! for these
 To his divine appointments ever cleave,
 	And no new business break their peace;
 The birds nor sow, nor reap, yet sup and dine,
 		The flowres without clothes live,
 Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.

 	Man hath stil either toyes, or Care
 He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,
 But ever restless and Irregular
 	About this Earth doth run and ride,
 He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where,
 		He sayes it is so far
 That he hath quite forgot how to go there.

 	He knocks at all doors, strays and romas,
 Nay hath not so much with 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 order'd motion, but ordain'd no rest.


Peace

 My Soul, there is a Countrie
 	Far beyond the stars,
 Where stands a winged Centrie
 	All skilfull in the wars,
 There above noise, and dnager
 	Sweet peace sits crown'd with smiles,
 And one born in a Manger
 	Commands the Beauteous files,
 He is they gracious friend,
 	And (O my Soul awake!)
 Did in pure love descend
 	To die her for thy sake,
 If thou canst get but thither,
 	There growes the flowre of peace,
 The Rose that cannot wither,
 	Thy fortresse, and thy ease;
 Leave them thy foolish ranges;
 	For none can thee secure,
 But one, who never changes,
 	Thy God, thy life, they Cure.



George Herbert

The Collar

 I struck the board, and cry'd, No more.
 			I will abroad.
 	What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
 My lines and life are free; free as the rode,
 	Loose as the winde, as large as store.
 		Shall I be still in suit?
 	Have I no harvest but a thorn
 	To let me bloud, and not restore
 	What I have lost with cordiall fruit?
 			Sure there was wine
 Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn
 		Before my tears did drown it.
 	Is the yeare only lost to me?
 		Have I no bayes 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 they sigh-blown age
 On double pleasures: leave they cold dispute
 Of what is fit, and not. Forsake they cage,
 			Thy rope of sands,
 Which pettie 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 they deaths head there: tie up thy fears.
 			He that forbears
 		To suit and serve his need,
 			Deserves his load.
 But as I rav'd and grew more fierce and wilde
 			At every word,
 Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child!
 	And I reply'd, My Lord.


Love

 Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
 		Guilite of dust and sinne.
 But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
 		From my first entrance in,
 Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
 		If I lack'd any thing.

 A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
 		Love said, You shall be he.
 I the unkinde, ungrateful? Ah my deare,
 		I cannot look on thee.
 Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
 		Who made the eyes but I?

 Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
 		Go where it doth deserve.
 And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
 		My deare, then I will serve.
 You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
 		So I did sit and eat.


Life

 I made a posie, while the day ran by:
 Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
 		My life within this band.
 But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
 By Noon most cunningly did steal away,
 		And wither'd in my hand.

 My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
 I took, without more thinking, in good part
 		Times gentle admonition:
 Who did so sweetly deaths sad taste convey,
 Making my minde to smell my fateful day;
 		Yet surging the suspicion.

 Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
 Fit, while ye liv'd for smell or ornament,
 		And after death for cures.
 I follow straight without complaints or grief,
 Since if my sent be good, I care not if
 		It be as short as yours.


Vertue

 Sweet day so cool, so calm so bright,
 The bridall of the earth and skie:
 The dew shall weep they fall to night;
 		For thou must die.

 Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
 Thy root is ever in its grave,
 		And thou must die.

 Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
 A box where sweets compacted lie;
 My musick shows ye have your closes,
 		And all must die.

 Only a sweet and vertuous soul,
 Like season'd timber, never gives;
 But though the whole world turn to coal,
 		Then chiefly lives.


John Donne

The Good-Morrow

 I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
 Did, till we loved? were we not wean'd till then?
 But suck'd 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.

 And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
 Which watch not one another out of fear;
 For love all love of other sights controls,
 And makes one little room an everywhere.
 Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
 Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
 Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

 My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
 And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
 Where can we find two better hemispheres
 Without sharp north, without declining west?
 Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
 If our two loves be one, or thou and I
 Love so alike that non can slacken, none can die.


The Anniversary

   All kings, and all their favourites,
   All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
 The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass,
 Is elder by a year now than it was
 When thou and I first one another saw.
 All other things to their destruction draw,
   Only our love hath no decay;
 This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
 Running it never runs from us away,
 But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

   Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
   If one might, death were no divorce.
 Alas! as well as other princes, we
 --Who prince enough in one another be--
 Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
 Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
   But souls where nothing dwells but love
 --All other thoughts being inmates--then shall prove
 This or a love increased there above,
 when bodies to their graves, souls from their graves
   remove.

   And then we shall be thoroughly blest;
   But now no more than all the rest.
 Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
 Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
 Who is so safe as we? where none can do
 Treason to us, except one of us two.
   True and false fears let us refrain,
 Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
 Years and years unto years, till we attain
 To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.


A Hymn to God the Father

 Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
  Which was my sin, though it were done before?
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
  And do run still, though still I do deplore?
   When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
     	For I have more.

 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
  Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
  A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
   When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done.
   	For I have more.

 I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
  My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
 But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
  Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore:
   And, having done that, Thou hast done:
   	I fear no more.


At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners

 At the round earth's imagined corners blow
 Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
 From death, you numberless infinities
 Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
 All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
 All whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies,
 Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
 Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.

 But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
 For if above all these my sins abound,
 'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
 When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
 Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
 As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.


Batter my Heart

 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
 As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
 Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain;
 But am bethroth'd unto your enemy;
 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
 Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.


O, My Black Soul

 O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
 By sickness, Death's herald and champion;
 Thou'rt like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
 Treason, and durst not turn to whence he's fled;
 Or like a thief, which till death's doom be read,
 Wisheth himself deliver'd from prison,
 But damn'd and haled to execution,
 Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
 Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack;
 But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
 O, make thyself with holy mourning black,
 And red with blushing, as thou art with sin;
 Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,
 That being red, it dyes red souls to white.


William Shakespeare

Sonnet No. 15
When I Consider Everything That Grows

 When I consider everything that grows
 Holds in perfection but a little moment,
 That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
 Whereon I perceive that men as plants increase,
 Cheered and check'd e'en by the self-same sky,
 Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
 And wear their brave state out of memory:
 Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
 Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
 Where wasteful Time debateth with decay,
 To change your day of youth to sullied night;
   And, all in war with Time for love of you,
   As he takes from you, I engraft you new.


Sonnet No. 23
As An Unperfect Actor On The Stage

 As an unperfect actor on the stage,
 Who with his fear is put besides his part,
 Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
 Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
 So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
 The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
 And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
 O'ercharg'd with burthen of mine own love's might.
 O! let my books be then the eloquence
 And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
 Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
 More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
   O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
   To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.


Sonnet No. 29
When In Disgrace With Fortune And Men's Eyes

 When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
 I all alone beweep my outcast state,
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate:
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
 Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
 With what I most enjoy contented least:
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
 Haply I think on thee,--and then my state,
 Like to the lark at break of day arising
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gat;
   For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


Sonnet No. 30
When To The Sessions Of Sweet Silent Thought

 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
 I summon up remembrance of things past,
 I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
 And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
 Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
 Fro precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
 And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
 And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight:
 Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
 And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
 The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
 Which I new pay as if not paid before.
   But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
   All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.


Sonnet No. 55
Not Marble, Nor The Gilded Monuments

 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;
 but you shall shine more bright in these contents
 Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
 When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
 And broils root out the work of masonry,
 Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
 The living record of your memory.
 Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
 Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
 Even in the eyes of all posterity
 That wear this world out to the ending doom.
   So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
   You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.


Sonnet No. 60
Like As The Waves Make Towards The Pebbled Shore

 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
 So do our minutes hasten to their end;
 Each changing place with that which goes before,
 In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
 Nativity, once in the main of light,
 Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
 Cooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
 And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
 Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
 And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
 Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
 And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
   And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
   Praising they worth, despite his cruel hand.


Sonnet No. 64
When I Have Seen By Time's Fell Hand Defaced

 When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
 The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
 When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,
 And brass eternal slave to mortal rage:
 When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
 Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
 And the firm soil win of the watery main,
 Increasing store with loss, and loss with store:
 When I have seen such interchange of state,
 Or state itself confounded to decay;
 Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate--
 That Time will come and take my love away.
   This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
   But weep to have that which it fears to lose.


Sonnet No. 65
Since Brass, Nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea

 Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
 But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
 How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
 Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
 O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out
 Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
 When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
 nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
 O fearful meditation! where, alack,
 Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
 Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
 Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
   O! None, unless this miracle have might,
   That in black ink my love may still shine bright.


Sonnet No. 71
No Longer Mourn For Me When I Am Dead

 No longer mourn for me when I am dead
 Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
 Give warning to the world that I am fled
 From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
 nay, if you read this line, remember not
 The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
 That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
 If thinking on my then should make you woe.
 O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
 When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
 Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
 But let your love even with my life decay;
   Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
   And mock you with me after I am gone.


Sonnet No. 73
That Time Of Year Thou Mayest In Me Behold

 That time of year thou mayest in me behold
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
 bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
 As after sunset fadeth in the west,
 Which by and by black night doth take away,
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
 In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
 As the death-bed whereon it must expire
 Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
   This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.


Sonnet No. 86
Was It The Proud Full Sail Of His Great Verse

 Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
 Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
 That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
 Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
 Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
 Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
 No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
 Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
 He, nor that affable familiar ghost
 Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
 As victors of my silence cannot boast;
 I was not sick of any fear from thence:
   But when your countenance fil'd up his line,
   Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.


Sonnet No. 87
Farewell! Thou Art Too Dear For My Possessing

 Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
 And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
 The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
 My bonds in thee are all determinate.
 For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
 And for that riches where is my deserving?
 The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
 And so my patent back again is swerving.
 Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
 Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
 So thy great gift, upon misprison growing,
 Comes home again, on better judgement making.
   Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
   In sleep a king, but, waking no such matter.


Sonnet No. 116
Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds

 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
 Attempt impediments. Love is not love
 Which alters when it alternation finds,
 Or bends with the remover to remove.
 O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
 It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
 Within his bending sickle's compass come;
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error, and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Sonnet No. 130
My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun

 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
 Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
 If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
 If hairs be wires, black wires grow oh her head.
 I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
 But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
 And in some perfumes is there more delight
 Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
 I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
 That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
 I grant I never saw a goddess go,--
 My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love so rare
   As any she belied with false compare.


Sonnet No. 146
Poor Soul, The Centre Of My Sinful Earth

 Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
 Rebuke these rebel powers that thee array!
 Why dost thou pine within and suffer death,
 Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
 Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
 Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
 Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
 Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
 Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
 And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
 Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:
 Within be fed, without be rich no more.
   So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
   And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.


Geoffrey Chaucer

From "The Prolgoue to the Cantebury Tales"

 Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
 And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
 Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
 Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
 And smale foweles maken melodye,
 That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
 So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
 Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
 And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
 To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
 And specially, from every shires ende
 Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
 The hooly blisful martir for the seke
 That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
 Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
 In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
 Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
 To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,
 At nyght were come into that hostelrye
 Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
 Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
 In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
 That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
 The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
 And wel we weren esed atte beste;
 And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
 So hadde I spoken with hem everychon
 That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
 And made forward erly for to ryse
 To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.
 But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,
 Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
 Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
 To telle yow al the condicioun
 Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
 And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
 And eek in what array that they were inne;
 And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.
 A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,
 That fro the tyme that he first bigan
 To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
 Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
 Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
 And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
 As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse,
 And evere honoured for his worthynesse.
 At Alisaundre he was, whan it was wonne;
 Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
 Aboven alle nacions in Pruce;
 In Lettow hadde he reysed, and in Ruce,
 No cristen man so ofte of his degree.
 In Gernade at the seege eek hadde he be
 Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye;
 At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye,
 Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See
 At many a noble arive hadde he be.
 At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene,
 And foughten for oure feith at Tramyssene
 In lystes thries, and ay slayn his foo.
 This ilke worthy knyght hadde been also
 Somtyme with the lord of Palatye
 Agayn another hethen in Turkye,
 And everemoore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
 And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
 And of his port as meeke as is a mayde;
 He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde
 In al his lyf unto no maner wight;
 He was a verray parfit gentil knyght.
 But for to tellen yow of his array,
 His hors weren goode, but he was nat gay.
 Of fustian he wered a gypoun,
 Al bismotered with his habergeoun;
 For he was late ycome from his viage,
 And wente for to doon his pilgrymage.
 With hym ther was his sone, a yong Squier,
 A lovyere and a lusty bacheler,
 With lokkes crulle, as they were leyd in presse.
 Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.
 Of his stature he was of evene lengthe,
 And wonderly delyvere, and of greet strengthe.
 And he hadde been somtyme in chyvachie
 In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Pycardie,
 And born hym weel, as of so litel space,
 In hope to stonden in his lady grace.
 Embrouded was he, as it were a meede,
 Al ful of fresshe floures whyte and reede;
 Syngynge he was, or floytynge, al the day,
 He was as fressh as is the monthe of May.
 Short was his gowne, with sleves longe and wyde.
 Wel koude he sitte on hors, and faire ryde,
 He koude songes make, and wel endite,
 Juste, and eek daunce, and weel purtreye and write.
 So hoote he lovede, that by nyghtertale
 He slepte namoore than dooth a nyghtyngale.
 Curteis he was, lowely, and servysable,
 And carf biforn his fader at the table.
 A Yeman hadde he, and servantz namo
 At that tyme, for hym liste ride soo;
 And he was clad in cote and hood of grene,
 A sheef of pecok arwes bright and kene
 Under his belt he bar ful thriftily-
 Wel koude he dresse his takel yemanly,
 Hise arwes drouped noght with fetheres lowe-
 And in his hand he baar a myghty bowe.
 A not -heed hadde he, with a broun visage,
 Of woodecraft wel koude he al the usage.
 Upon his arm he baar a gay bracer,
 And by his syde a swerd and a bokeler,
 And on that oother syde a gay daggere,
 Harneised wel, and sharpe as point of spere.
 A Cristophere on his brest of silver sheene,
 An horn he bar, the bawdryk was of grene.
 A Forster was he, soothly, as I gesse.
 Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
 That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy.
 Hir gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy,
 And she was cleped Madame Eglentyne.
 Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,
 Entuned in hir nose ful semely;
 And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly
 After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,
 For Frenssh of Parys was to hir unknowe.
 At mete wel ytaught was she withalle;
 She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,
 Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe.
 Wel koude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe
 That no drope ne fille upon hir brist.
 In curteisie was set ful muche hir list;
 Hire over-lippe wyped she so clene,
 That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene
 Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.
 Ful semely after hir mete she raughte;
 And sikerly, she was of greet desport,
 And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port,
 And peyned hir to countrefete cheere
 Of court, and been estatlich of manere,
 And to ben holden digne of reverence.
 But for to speken of hir conscience,
 She was so charitable and so pitous,
 She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous
 Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
 Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
 With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed.
 But soore weep she if oon of hem were deed,
 Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte;
 And al was conscience, and tendre herte.
 Ful semyly hir wympul pynched was,
 Hire nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas,
 Hir mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed;
 But sikerly, she hadde a fair forheed,
 It was almoost a spanne brood, I trowe,
 For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.
 Ful fetys was hir cloke, as I was war;
 Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar
 A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,
 An theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,
 On which ther was first write a crowned `A,'
 And after,`Amor vincit omnia.'
 Another Nonne with hir hadde she,
 That was hire Chapeleyne, and preestes thre.

