FullReads

…

To the oblivion whither I and thou,
All loving and all lovely, hasten now
With steps, ah, too unequal! may we meet
In one Elysium or one winding-sheet!

If any should be curious to discover
Whether to you I am a friend or lover,
Let them read Shakespeare’s sonnets, taking thence
A whetstone for their dull intelligence
That tears and will not cut, or let them guess
How Diotima, the wise prophetess,
Instructed the instructor, and why he
Rebuked the infant spirit of melody
On Agathon’s sweet lips, which as he spoke
Was as the lovely star when morn has broke
The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn,
Half-hidden, and yet beautiful.
I’ll pawn
My hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth —
That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth,
If they could tell the riddle offered here
Would scorn to be, or being to appear
What now they seem and are–but let them chide,
They have few pleasures in the world beside;
Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden,
Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden.
Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.

…

Farewell, if it can be to say farewell
To those who

…

I will not, as most dedicators do,
Assure myself and all the world and you,
That you are faultless–would to God they were
Who taunt me with your love! I then should wear
These heavy chains of life with a light spirit,
And would to God I were, or even as near it
As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? Clouds
Driven by the wind in warring multitudes,
Which rain into the bosom of the earth,
And rise again, and in our death and birth,
And through our restless life, take as from heaven
Hues which are not our own, but which are given,
And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance
Flash from the spirit to the countenance.
There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God
Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,
A Pythian exhalation, which inspires
Love, only love–a wind which o’er the wires
Of the soul’s giant harp
There is a mood which language faints beneath;
You feel it striding, as Almighty Death
His bloodless steed…

…

And what is that most brief and bright delight
Which rushes through the touch and through the sight,
And stands before the spirit’s inmost throne,
A naked Seraph? None hath ever known.
Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;
Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
It fills the world with glory-and is gone.

…

It floats with rainbow pinions o’er the stream
Of life, which flows, like a … dream
Into the light of morning, to the grave
As to an ocean…

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What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them by,
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in giant toys
Wrought by the busy … ever new?
Remembrance borrows Fancy’s glass, to show
These forms more … sincere 160
Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
When everything familiar seemed to be
Wonderful, and the immortality
Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
Was felt as one with the awakening spirit,
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation…

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Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily,
For all those exiles from the dull insane
Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,
For all that band of sister-spirits known
To one another by a voiceless tone?

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If day should part us night will mend division
And if sleep parts us–we will meet in vision
And if life parts us–we will mix in death
Yielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath
Death cannot part us–we must meet again
In all in nothing in delight in pain:
How, why or when or where–it matters not
So that we share an undivided lot…

…

And we will move possessing and possessed
Wherever beauty on the earth’s bare [?] breast
Lies like the shadow of thy soul–till we
Become one being with the world we see…