Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden 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, Makes faint with too much sweet these heavywinged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, 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, 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; The world should listen then as I am listening now! Percy Bysshe Shelley. THE NIGHT PIECE HER eyes the glow-worm lend thee, And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee. No will-o'-th'-wisp mislight thee, But on, on thy way, Not making a stay, Since ghost there is none to affright thee. Let not the dark thee cumber; Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear, without number. Then, Julia, let me woo thee, Thus, thus to come unto me; 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, In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired: Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare 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 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 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, |