JOHN MILTON

When I Consider How My Light is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Either mans work or His own gifts. Who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post oer land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

A Poison Tree
I
I
I
I

was angry with my friend;

told my wrath, my wrath did end.
was angry with my foe:
told it not, my wrath did grow.

London

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

And it grew both day and night.

Till it bore an apple bright.

WILLIAM BLAKE

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine.

Her husbands presence only, called that spot

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, Her mantle laps

ROBERT BROWNING
My Last Duchess
Thats my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolfs hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Willt please you sit and look at her? I said
Fra Pandolf by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

Of joy into the Duchess cheek; perhaps

Over my ladys wrist too much, or Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat. Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A hearthow shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whateer
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terraceall and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

Or blush, at least. She thanked mengood! but

thanked

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

SomehowI know not howas if she ranked

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, twas not

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

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With anybodys gift. Whod stoop to blame

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

In speechwhich I have notto make your will

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Quite clear to such an one, and say, Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

LORD TENNYSON

Or there exceed the markand if she let

Ulysses

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

It little profits that an idle king,

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Een then would be some stooping; and I choose

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

Wheneer I passed her; but who passed without

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

As if alive. Willt please you rise? Well meet

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

The company below, then. I repeat,

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

The Count your masters known munificence

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Though his fair daughters self, as I avowed

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

At starting, is my object. Nay, well go

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

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Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

I am a part of all that I have met;

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

For ever and forever when I move.

Of common duties, decent not to fail

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

In offices of tenderness, and pay

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

Meet adoration to my household gods,

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

From that eternal silence, something more,

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with

me

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheadsyou and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
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Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Dover Beach

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The sea is calm tonight.

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Only, from the long line of spray

Of all the western stars, until I die.

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

Listen! you hear the grating roar

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

At their return, up the high strand,

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

We are not now that strength which in old days

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

The eternal note of sadness in.

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

Sophocles long ago

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Heard it on the gean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Of human misery; we
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Find also in the sound a thought,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

PERCY B. SHELLEY
The Sea of Faith

Ode to the West Wind

Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

But now I only hear

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

And naked shingles of the world.

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

And we are here as on a darkling plain

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

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Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

II

III

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's

commotion,

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine ary surge,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

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Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven

And, by the incantation of this verse,

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

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LORD BYRON
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

Isles of Greece

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Who saidTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

But all, except their sun, is set.

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

The Scian and the Teian muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

To sounds which echo further west

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Than your sires' 'Islands of the Blest.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The mountains look on Marathon-And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might still be free;
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For standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.

A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;--all were his!
He counted them at break of day-And when the sun set, where were they?

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?

Must we but blush?--Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!

And where are they? and where art thou,

My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

What, silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;--the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, 'Let one living head,
But one, arise,--we come, we come!'
'Tis but the living who are dumb.

'Tis something in the dearth of fame,

Though link'd among a fetter'd race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,

In vain--in vain: strike other chords;

Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
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Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine:
Hark! rising to the ignoble call-How answers each bold Bacchanal!

Was freedom's best and bravest friend;

That tyrant was Miltiades!
O that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;

Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine:
He served--but served Polycrates-A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks-They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

The tyrant of the Chersonese

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Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Our virgins dance beneath the shade-I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

My own the burning tear-drop laves,

Which waves in every raven tress,

To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Or softly lightens oer her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

Where nothing, save the waves and I,

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:

And on that cheek, and oer that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine--

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

She Walks in Beauty

A heart whose love is innocent!

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

Well Go No More A Roving

And all thats best of dark and bright

So, we'll go no more a roving

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,
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And the moon be still as bright.

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Noyet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

Though the night was made for loving,

And so live everor else swoon to death.

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

On First Looking into Chapmans Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

JOHN KEATS

Round many western islands have I been

Bright Star

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
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Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacificand all his men

Ode to a Grecian Urn

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pild books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the nights starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting lovethen on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
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Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

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