Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from

the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavywinged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth

surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain ?

With thy clear, keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest

thought.

Yet, if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear,

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow

The world should listen then as I am listening now!

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

THE NIGHT PIECE

HER eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee;

And the elves also,

Whose little eyes glow

Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

No will-o'-th'-wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee;

But on, on thy way,

Not making a stay,

Since ghost there is none to affright thee.

Let not the dark thee cumber;
What though the moon does slumber?
The stars of the night

Will lend thee their light,

Like tapers clear, without number.

Then, Julia, let me woo thee,

Thus, thus to come unto me;
And when I shall meet

Thy silvery feet,

My soul I'll pour into thee.

Robert Herrick.

GO, LOVELY ROSE

Go, lovely rose !

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung

In deserts, where no men abide,

Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee :

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Edmund Waller.

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

Он, to be in England,

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England

now!

And after April when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops, at the bent spray's

edge,

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice

over,