Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head A lamp that well might pharos all the lands; Anon the light will neither rise nor spread: Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands! A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp Under a bushel with an earthy smell! Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp, […]

The stars are all watching; God’s angel is catching At thy skirts in the darkness deep! Gold hinges grating, The mighty dead waiting, Why dost thou sleep? Years without number, Ages of slumber, Stiff in the track of the infinite One! Dead, can I think it? Dropt like a trinket, A thing whose uses are […]

See how the storm of life ascends Up through the shadow of the world! Beyond our gaze the line extends, Like wreaths of vapour tempest-hurled! Grasp tighter, brother, lest the storm Should sweep us down from where we stand, And we may catch some human form We know, amongst the straining band. See! see in […]

TO E.M. II. Dear friend, you love the poet’s song, And here is one for your regard. You know the “melancholy bard,” Whose grief is wise as well as strong; Already something understand For whom he mourns and what he sings, And how he wakes with golden strings The echoes of “the silent land;” How, […]

Seek not my name–it doth no virtue bear; Seek, seek thine own primeval name to find– The name God called when thy ideal fair Arose in deeps of the eternal mind. When that thou findest, thou art straight a lord Of time and space–art heir of all things grown; And not my name, poor, earthly […]

FROM SCHILLER. “Which of you, knight or squire, will dare Plunge into yonder gulf? A golden beaker I fling in it–there! The black mouth swallows it like a wolf! Who brings me the cup again, whoever, It is his own–he may keep it for ever!” ‘Tis the king who speaks. He flings from the brow […]

When the storm was proudest, And the wind was loudest, I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below; When the stars were bright, And the ground was white, I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow. Many voices spake– The river to the lake, And the iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea; And every […]

They are blind, and they are dead: We will wake them as we go; There are words have not been said, There are sounds they do not know: We will pipe and we will sing– With the Music and the Spring Set their hearts a wondering! They are tired of what is old, We will […]

Through the unchanging heaven, as ye have sped, Speed onward still, a strange wild company, Fleet children of the waters! Glorious ye, Whether the sun lift up his shining head, High throned at noontide and established Among the shifting pillars, or we see The sable ghosts of air sleep mournfully Against the sunlight, passionless and […]

If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem Thou art a coward if thy safety seem To spring too little from a righteous will; For there is nightmare on thee, nor until Thy soul hath caught the morning’s early gleam Seek thou to analyze the monstrous […]

Tumultuous rushing o’er the outstretched plains; A wildered maze of comets and of suns; The blood of changeless God that ever runs With quick diastole up the immortal veins; A phantom host that moves and works in chains; A monstrous fiction, which, collapsing, stuns The mind to stupor and amaze at once; A tragedy which […]

Rich is the fancy which can double back All seeming forms, and from cold icicles Build up high glittering palaces where dwells Summer perfection, moulding all this wrack To spirit symmetry, and doth not lack The power to hear amidst the funeral bells The eternal heart’s wind-melody which swells In whirlwind flashes all along its […]

If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain. Others will live in peace, and thou be fain To bargain with despair, and in thy need To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed. These palaces, for thee they stand in vain; Thine is a […]

“And yet it moves!” Ah, Truth, where wert thou then When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? Wert thou in heaven, and busy with thy hymn When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? Art thou a phantom that deceives! men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and […]

And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost? I am perplexed with thee that thou shouldst cost This earth another turning! All aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far mountain-tops! and I would post Over the breadth of seas, though I […]

I. One do I see and twelve; but second there Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one; Not from thy nobler port, for there are none More quiet-featured: some there are who bear Their message on their brows, while others wear A look of large commission, nor will shun The fiery trial, so their work […]

From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze Of eyes unearthly, which go to and fro Upon the people’s tumult, for below The nations smite each other: no amaze Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays Their deep-set contemplation; steadily glow Those ever holier eyeballs, for they grow Liker unto the eyes of one that […]

‘Tis not the violent hands alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, A more immortal agony will cling To the half fashioned sin which would assume Fair Virtue’s garb; the eye that sows the gloom With […]

There is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near […]

Nature, to him no message dost thou bear Who in thy beauty findeth not the power To gird himself more strongly for the hour Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear To him who knows thy secret, and, in shower, And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a […]