Written by
Emily Brontë |
The moon is full this winter night;
The stars are clear, though few;
And every window glistens bright,
With leaves of frozen dew.
The sweet moon through your lattice gleams
And lights your room like day;
And there you pass, in happy dreams,
The peaceful hours away!
While I, with effort hardly quelling
The anguish in my breast,
Wander about the silent dwelling,
And cannot think of rest.
The old clock in the gloomy hall
Ticks on, from hour to hour;
And every time its measured call
Seems lingering slow and slower:
And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star
Has tracked the chilly grey!
What, watching yet! how very far
The morning lies away!
Without your chamber door I stand;
Love, are you slumbering still?
My cold heart, underneath my hand,
Has almost ceased to thrill.
Bleak, bleak the east wind sobs and sighs,
And drowns the turret bell,
Whose sad note, undistinguished, dies
Unheard, like my farewell!
To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name,
And Hate will trample me,
Will load me with a coward's shame?
A traitor's perjury.
False friends will launch their covert sneers;
True friends will wish me dead;
And I shall cause the bitterest tears
That you have ever shed.
The dark deeds of my outlawed race
Will then like virtues shine;
And men will pardon their disgrace,
Beside the guilt of mine.
For, who forgives the accursed crime
Of dastard treachery?
Rebellion, in its chosen time,
May Freedom's champion be;
Revenge may stain a righteous sword,
It may be just to slay;
But, traitor, traitor, from that word
All true breasts shrink away!
Oh, I would give my heart to death,
To keep my honour fair;
Yet, I'll not give my inward faith
My honour's name to spare!
Not even to keep your priceless love,
Dare I, Beloved, deceive;
This treason should the future prove,
Then, only then, believe!
I know the path I ought to go;
I follow fearlessly,
Inquiring not what deeper woe
Stern duty stores for me.
So foes pursue, and cold allies
Mistrust me, every one:
Let me be false in others' eyes,
If faithful in my own.
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Written by
Richard Crashaw |
O heart, the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life, where'er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms;
Let mystic deaths wait on 't, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart,
Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combin'd against this breast, at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dow'r of lights and fires,
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove,
By all thy lives and deaths of love,
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they,
By all thy brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire,
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz'd thy parting soul and seal'd thee his,
By all the heav'ns thou hast in him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!
By all of him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of my self in me:
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may die.
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Written by
Mary Darby Robinson |
THOU! whose sublime poetic art
Can pierce the pulses of the heart,
Can force the treasur'd tear to flow
In prodigality of woe;
Or lure each jocund bliss to birth
Amid the sportive bow'rs of mirth:
LAURA DIVINE! I call thee now
To yonder promontory's brow
That props the skies; while at its feet
With fruitless ire the billows beat,
There let my fainting sense behold
Those sapphire orbs their heaven unfold,
While from thy lips vermilion bow
Sweet melody her shafts shall throw
Yet do not, do not yield delight,
Nor with dear visions bless my sight.
Grant me despair, thou mightiest Muse!
O'er the vast scene thy spells diffuse,
And with a mad terrific strain
Conjure up demons from the main:
Storms upon storms indignant heap,
Bid Ocean howl, and Nature weep;
'Till the Creator blush to see
How horrible His World can be;
While I will glory to blaspheme,
And make the joys of hell my theme.
Hah! check this frenzy, spare my soul,
O'er my parch'd cheek soft sorrows roll,
Subdue this vain impassion'd rage,
An atom's energies assuage;
Nor let a mortal wretch presume
To invocate so dire a doom.
What tho' the EAGLE sits forlorn
And swoln and sad awaits the morn,
When he may wave his golden wing,
From Night's detested gloom to spring,
And with the Sun's advancement fly,
In full meridian blaze to die:
Yet shall the chirping FINCH decay,
Upon the hedgerow's wither'd spray,
Ere the first beam of light is found,
And drop unnotic'd to the ground.
So I alas! shall never see
The dawn of hope awake for me,
Still as I turn, new storms appear,
And darker lours this mental sphere.
Ah, who shall one short comfort give,
Or teach my struggling thought to live;
What hand my bleeding bosom bind,
What MOSELEY medicate my mind?
What Star disperse the thick'ning shade,
That bids my restless Being fade?
Yet I have seen the Lord of Day
Dart from his car the burning ray,
And rush a hero to the fight,
Across the pendant plains of light:
I've seen the bashful Moon aspire
To bind her brow with mimic fire,
And o'er the calm translucent air
Diffusive shake her silver hair.
I've paus'd enraptur'd at the tone
That from the Evening Copse is thrown
By the wild Poet of the glade,
Who rests his wing beneath the shade,
And I have prov'd th' unequal bliss
That burns upon the crimson kiss,
When true adoring souls unite
To perish in the proud delight.
These now are lost to meI stand
Alone in ev'ry peopled land,
No pleasure now my cold heart cheers,
The future points a vale of tears
Love rends my name from his bright page,
And yields it to approaching age
Then lead me, LAURA! to the bow'r
Where sadly droops each with'ring flow'r,
Where pois'nous shrubs disease exhale,
And fev'rish vapours load the gale;
There sink me to the sordid grief
That meanly supplicates relief;
There tell me I am most despis'd,
E'en by thyself, whom most I priz'd,
So shall I gladly welcome fate,
And perish in thy perfect hate:
So shall I better bear th' eternal pain,
Never to see thy Form, or hear thy Voice again.
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Written by
Joel Barlow |
ALONG the banks where Babel's current flows
Our captive bands in deep despondence stray'd,
While Zion's fall in sad remembrance rose,
Her friends, her children mingled with the dead.
The tuneless harp, that once with joy we strung,
When praise employ'd and mirth inspir'd the lay,
In mournful silence on the willows hung;
And growing grief prolong'd the tedious day.
The barbarous tyrants, to increase the woe,
With taunting smiles a song of Zion claim;
Bid sacred praise in strains melodious flow,
While they blaspheme the great Jehovah's name.
But how, in heathen chains and lands unknown,
Shall Israel's sons a song of Zion raise?
O hapless Salem, God's terrestrial throne,
Thou land of glory, sacred mount of praise.
If e'er my memory lose thy lovely name,
If my cold heart neglect my kindred race,
Let dire destruction seize this guilty frame;
My hand shall perish and my voice shall cease.
Yet shall the Lord, who hears when Zion calls,
O'ertake her foes with terror and dismay,
His arm avenge her desolated walls,
And raise her children to eternal day.
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Written by
Louisa May Alcott |
We are sending you, dear flowers
Forth alone to die,
Where your gentle sisters may not weep
O'er the cold graves where you lie;
But you go to bring them fadeless life
In the bright homes where they dwell,
And you softly smile that't is so,
As we sadly sing farewell.
O plead with gentle words for us,
And whisper tenderly
Of generous love to that cold heart,
And it will answer ye;
And though you fade in a dreary home,
Yet loving hearts will tell
Of the joy and peace that you have given:
Flowers, dear flowers, farewell!
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Written by
Thomas Moore |
As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow
While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below,
So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile,
Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.
One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes,
To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring,
For which joy has no balm and affliction no sting --
Oh! this thought in the midst of enjoyment will stay,
Like a dead, leafless branch in the summer's bright ray;
The beams of the warm sun play round it in vain;
It may smile in his light, but it blooms not again.
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Written by
Omar Khayyam |
Alas for that cold heart, which never glows
With love, nor e'er that charming madness knows;
The days misspent with no redeeming love;—
No days are wasted half as much as those!
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Written by
Mary Darby Robinson |
I wake! delusive phantoms hence, away!
Tempt not the weakness of a lover's breast;
The softest breeze can shake the halcyon's nest,
And lightest clouds o'ercast the dawning ray!
'Twas but a vision! Now, the star of day
Peers, like a gem on Aetna's burning crest!
Wellcome, ye Hills, with golden vintage drest;
Sicilian forests brown, and vallies gay!
A mournful stranger, from the Lesbian Isle,
Not strange, in loftiest eulogy of Song!
She, who could teach the Stoic's cheek to smile,
Thaw the cold heart, and chain the wond'ring throng,
Can find no balm, love's arrows to beguile;
Ah! Sorrows known too soon! and felt too long!
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Written by
Louisa May Alcott |
Brighter shone the golden shadows;
On the cool wind softly came
The low, sweet tones of happy flowers,
Singing little Violet's name.
'Mong the green trees was it whispered,
And the bright waves bore it on
To the lonely forest flowers,
Where the glad news had not gone.
Thus the Frost-King lost his kingdom,
And his power to harm and blight.
Violet conquered, and his cold heart
Warmed with music, love, and light;
And his fair home, once so dreary,
Gay with lovely Elves and flowers,
Brought a joy that never faded
Through the long bright summer hours.
Thus, by Violet's magic power,
All dark shadows passed away,
And on the home of happy flowers
The golden light for ever lay.
Thus the Fairy mission ended,
And all Flower-Land was taught
The "Power of Love," by gentle deeds
That little Violet wrought.
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Written by
Rupert Brooke |
Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces --
All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
Yet -- with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
And ceased, above my intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me
Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
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