FullReads

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SHELLEY AND HARRIET WESTBROOK

A star look’d down from heaven and loved a flower
Grown in earth’s garden–loved it for an hour:

Let eyes that trace his orbit in the spheres
Refuse not, to a ruin’d rosebud, tears.

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THE PLAY OF “KING LEAR”

Here Love the slain with Love the slayer lies;
Deep drown’d are both in the same sunless pool.
Up from its depths that mirror thundering skies
Bubbles the wan mirth of the mirthless Fool.

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TO A POET

Time, the extortioner, from richest beauty
Takes heavy toll and wrings rapacious duty.
Austere of feature if thou carve thy rhyme,
Perchance ’twill pay the lesser tax to Time.

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THE YEAR’S MINSTRELSY

Spring, the low prelude of a lordlier song:
Summer, a music without hint of death:
Autumn, a cadence lingeringly long:
Winter, a pause;–the Minstrel-Year takes breath.

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THE RUINED ABBEY

Flower fondled, clasp’d in ivy’s close caress,
It seems allied with Nature, yet apart:–
Of wood’s and wave’s insensate loveliness
The glad, sad, tranquil, passionate, human heart.

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MICHELANGELO’S “MOSES”

The captain’s might, and mystery of the seer–
Remoteness of Jehovah’s colloquist,
Nearness of man’s heaven-advocate–are here:
Alone Mount Nebo’s harsh foreshadow is miss’d.

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THE ALPS

Adieu, white brows of Europe! sovereign brows,
That wear the sunset for a golden tiar.
With me in memory shall your phantoms house
For ever, whiter than yourselves, and higher.

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THE CATHEDRAL SPIRE

It soars like hearts of hapless men who dare
To sue for gifts the gods refuse to allot;
Who climb for ever toward they know not where,
Baffled for ever by they know not what.

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AN EPITAPH

His friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes–
Cats–I believe he did but feign to hate.
My hand will miss the insinuated nose,
Mine eyes the tail that wagg’d contempt at Fate.

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THE METROPOLITAN UNDERGROUND RAILWAY

Here were a goodly place wherein to die;–
Grown latterly to sudden change averse,
All violent contrasts fain avoid would I
On passing from this world into a worse.

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TO A SEABIRD

Fain would I have thee barter fates with me,–
Lone loiterer where the shells like jewels be,
Hung on the fringe and frayed hem of the sea.
But no,–’twere cruel, wild-wing’d Bliss! to thee.

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ON DUeRER’S MELENCOLIA

What holds her fixed far eyes nor lets them range?
Not the strange sea, strange earth, or heav’n more strange;
But her own phantom dwarfing these great three,
More strange than all, more old than heav’n, earth, sea.

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TANTALUS

He wooes for ever, with foil’d lips of drouth,
The wave that wearies not to mock his mouth.
‘Tis Lethe’s; they alone that tide have quaff’d
Who never thirsted for the oblivious draught.

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A MAIDEN’S EPITAPH

She dwelt among us till the flowers, ’tis said,
Grew jealous of her: with precipitate feet,
As loth to wrong them unawares, she fled.
Earth is less fragrant now, and heaven more sweet.