MOST SWEET IT IS WITH UNUPLIFTED EYES
MOST sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us, from that day
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
It may indeed be phantasy when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, to me it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and Thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
A WRINKLED, CRABBED MAN THEY
PICTURE THEE
A WRINKLED, crabbed man they picture thee,
Old Winter, with a rugged beard as gray
As the long moss upon the apple-tree;
Blue-lipped, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose,
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding along through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old Winter! seated in thy great arm-chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth;
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night,
Pausing at times to rouse the mouldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.
Robert Southey (1774-1843).
NIGHT AND DEATH
MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife!
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841).
TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET
GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song:
In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).
WHAT ART THOU, MIGHTY ONE! AND
WHERE THY SEAT?
WHAT art thou, Mighty One! and where thy seat?
Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands,
And thou dost bear within thine awful hands
The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet;
Stern on thy dark-wrought car of cloud and wind,
Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dead noon,
Or, on the red wing of the fierce monsoon,
Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind.
In the drear silence of the polar span
Dost thou repose? or in the solitude
Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan
Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood?
Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace,
Who glows through all the fields of boundless space!
Henry Kirke White (1785-1806).
ETERNAL spirit of the chainless Mind!
Bright in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar; for 't was trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavements were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.
Lord Byron (1788–1824).
THE ROCK OF CASHEL
ROYAL and saintly Cashel! I would gaze
Upon the wreck of thy departed powers
Not in the dewy light of matin hours,
Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze,
But at the close of dim autumnal days,
When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers,
Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers
Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's
Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks,
There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles
A melancholy moral; such as sinks
On the lone traveller's heart, amid the piles
Of vast Persepolis on her mountain-stand,
Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand.
Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788-1846).
SOME LAWS THERE ARE TOO SACRED FOR
THE HAND
SOME laws there are too sacred for the hand
Of man to approach; recorded in the blood
Of patriots; before which, as the Rood
Of Faith, devotional we take our stand.
Time-hallowed laws! magnificently planned
When Freedom was the nurse of public good,
And Power, paternal: laws that have withstood
All storms unshaken bulwarks of the land!
Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind,
Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain,
On such we found our rights, to such we cling:
In these shall Power her surest safeguard find.
Tread them not down in passion or disdain:
Make Man a reptile, he will turn and sting.
It was late summer, and the grass again
Had grown knee-deep, we stood, my love and I,
Awhile in silence where the stream runs by;
Idly we listened to a plaintive strain, -
A young maid singing to her youthful swain,
Ah
me, dead days remembered make us sigh,
And tears will sometimes flow we know not why;
If spring be past, I said, shall love remain?
She moved aside, yet soon she answered me,
Turning her gaze responsive to mine own,-
Spring days are gone, and yet the grass, we see
Unto a goodly height again hath grown;
Dear love, just so love's aftermath may be
A richer growth than e'er spring days have known.
Samuel Waddington (1790-1812).
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