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Best Famous Continuous Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Continuous poems. This is a select list of the best famous Continuous poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Continuous poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of continuous poems.

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Written by William Wordsworth | Create an image from this poem

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils; 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay: 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced; but they 
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 
A poet could not but be gay, 
In such a jocund company: 
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought: 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils. 


Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

To The Sound Of Violins

 Give me life at its most garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming swarm

Of teens and twenties this foetid Friday night

On my way from the ward where our son paces

And fulminates I throw myself into the drowning

Tide of Friday to be rescued by sheer normality.

The mill girl with her mates asks anxiously

"Are you on your own? Come and join us

What’s your name?" Age has driven my shyness away 

As I join the crowd beneath the turning purple screens 

Bannered ‘****** lasts for ever’ and sip unending 

Halves of bitter, as I circulate among the crowd, 

Being complete in itself and out for a good night out,

A relief from factory, shop floor and market stall

Running from the reality of the ward where my son 

Pounds the ledge with his fist and seems out to blast

My very existence with words like bullets.

The need to anaesthetise the pain resurfaces 

Again and again. In Leeds City Square where 

Pugin’s church, the Black Prince and the Central Post Office

In its Edwardian grandeur are startled by the arching spumes

Or white water fountains and the steel barricades of Novotel

Rise from the ruins of a sixties office block.

I hurry past and join Boar Lane’s Friday crew

From Keighley and Dewsbury’s mills, hesitating

At the thought of being told I’m past my 

Sell-by-date and turned away by the West Indian

Bouncers, black-suited and city-council badged

Who checked my bag but smiled at ‘The Lights of 

Leeds’ and ‘Poets of Our Time’ tucked away as carefully as condoms-

Was it guns or drugs they were after

I wondered as I crossed the bare boards to the bar.

I stayed near the fruit machine which no-one played,

Where the crowd was thickest, the noise drowned out the pain

‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’ the chorus rang

The girls joined in but the young men knew 

The words no more than me. Dancing as we knew it 

In the sixties has gone, you do your own thing

And follow the beat, hampered by my bag

I just kept going, letting the music and the crowd

Hold me, my camera eye moving in search, in search…

What I’m searching for I don’t know

Searching’s a way of life that has to grow

"All of us who are patients here are searchers after truth"

My son kept saying, his legs shaking from the side effects

Of God-knows- what, pacing the tiny ward kitchen cum smoking room,

Denouncing his ‘illegal section’ and ‘poisonous medication’

To an audience of one.

The prospect of TV, Seroxat and Diazepan fazed me:

I was beyond unravelling Meltzer on differentiation 

Of self and object or Rosine Josef Perelberg on ‘Dreaming and Thinking’

Or even the simpler ‘Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States’ 

So I went out with West Yorkshire on a Friday night.

Nothing dramatic happened; perhaps I’m a little too used

To acute wards or worse where chairs fly across rooms,

Windows disintegrate and double doors are triple locked

And every nurse carries a white panic button and black pager

To pinpoint the moment’s crisis. Normality was a bit of adrenaline,

A wild therapy that drew me in, sanity had won the night.

"Are you on your own, love? Come and join us"

People kept asking if I was alright and why 

I had that damned great shoulder bag. I was introduced

To three young men about to tie the knot, a handsome lothario

In his midforties winked at me constantly,

Dancing with practised ease with sixteen year olds

Who all seemed to know him and determined to show him.

Three hours passed in as many minutes and then the crowds

Disappeared to catch the last bus home. The young aren’t 

As black as they are painted, one I danced with reminded me

Of how Margaret would have been at sixteen

With straw gold hair Yeats would have immortalised.

People seemed to guess I was haunted by an inner demon

I’d tried to leave in the raftered lofts of City Square

But failed to. Girls from sixteen to twenty six kept grabbing me

And making me dance and I found my teenage inhibitions

Gone at sixty-one and wildly gyrated to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

Egged on by the throng by the fruit machine and continuous

Thumbs-up signs from passing men. I had to forgo

A cheerful group of Aussies were intent on taking me clubbing

"I’d get killed or turned into a pumpkin

If I get home after midnight" I quipped to their delight

But being there had somehow put things right.
Written by Margaret Atwood | Create an image from this poem

The Landlady

 This is the lair of the landlady

She is
a raw voice
loose in the rooms beneath me.

the continuous henyard
squabble going on below
thought in this house like
the bicker of blood through the head.

She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
that bulge in under my doorsill;
she presides over my
meagre eating, generates
the light for eyestrain.

From her I rent my time:
she slams
my days like doors.
Nothing is mine.

and when I dream images
of daring escapes through the snow
I find myself walking
always over a vast face
which is the land-
lady's, and wake up shouting.

She is a bulk, a knot
swollen in a space. Though I have tried
to find some way around
her, my senses
are cluttered by perception
and can't see through her.

She stands there, a raucous fact
blocking my way:
immutable, a slab
of what is real.

solid as bacon.
Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Create an image from this poem

From ‘The Soul's Travelling'

 God, God! 
With a child’s voice I cry, 
Weak, sad, confidingly— 
God, God! 
Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up 
Unto Thy love (as none of ours are), droop 
As ours, o’er many a tear! 
Thou knowest, though Thy universe is broad, 
Two little tears suffice to cover all: 
Thou knowest, Thou, who art so prodigal 
Of beauty, we are oft but stricken deer 
Expiring in the woods—that care for none 
Of those delightsome flowers they die upon. 

O blissful Mouth which breathed the mournful breath 
We name our souls, self-spoilt!—by that strong passion 
Which paled Thee once with sighs,—by that strong death 
Which made Thee once unbreathing—from the wrack 
Themselves have called around them, call them back, 
Back to Thee in continuous aspiration! 
For here, O Lord, 
For here they travel vainly,—vainly pass 
From city-pavement to untrodden sward, 
Where the lark finds her deep nest in the grass 
Cold with the earth’s last dew. Yea, very vain 
The greatest speed of all these souls of men 
Unless they travel upward to the throne 
Where sittest THOU, the satisfying ONE, 
With help for sins and holy perfectings 
For all requirements—while the archangel, raising 
Unto Thy face his full ecstatic gazing, 
Forgets the rush and rapture of his wings.
Written by Philip Larkin | Create an image from this poem

The Old Fools

 What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
   Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
   How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
   This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
   We shall find out.


Written by William Cullen Bryant | Create an image from this poem

Thanatopsis

TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms she speaks 
A various language; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty and she glides 5 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit and sad images 10 
Of the stern agony and shroud and pall  
And breathless darkness and the narrow house  
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;¡ª 
Go forth under the open sky and list 
To Nature's teachings while from all around¡ª 15 
Earth and her waters and the depths of air¡ª 
Comes a still voice¡ªYet a few days and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground  
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears 20 
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist 
Thy image. Earth that nourished thee shall claim 
Thy growth to be resolved to earth again  
And lost each human trace surrendering up 
Thine individual being shalt thou go 25 
To mix forever with the elements; 
To be a brother to the insensible rock  
And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain 
Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould. 30 
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world ¡ªwith kings  
The powerful of the earth ¡ªthe wise the good 35 
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past  
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 
The venerable woods¡ªrivers that move 40 
In majesty and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green; and poured round all  
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste ¡ª 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun 45 
The planets all the infinite host of heaven  
Are shining on the sad abodes of death  
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom.¡ªTake the wings 50 
Of morning pierce the Barcan wilderness  
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound  
Save his own dashings ¡ªyet the dead are there: 
And millions in those solitudes since first 55 
The flight of years began have laid them down 
In their last sleep¡ªthe dead reign there alone. 
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw 
In silence from the living and no friend 
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe 60 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone the solemn brood of care 
Plod on and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments and shall come 65 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glide away the sons of men  
The youth in life's green spring and he who goes 
In the full strength of years matron and maid  
The speechless babe and the gray-headed man¡ª 70 
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side 
By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 75 
His chamber in the silent halls of death  
Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night  
Scourged to his dungeon but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 80 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
Written by Jorie Graham | Create an image from this poem

Le Manteau De Pascal

 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully, something dark-true,
as the evening calls the bird up into
the branches of the shaven hedgerows,
to twitter bodily
a makeshift coat — the boxelder cut back stringently by the owner 
that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know — 
the birds tucked gestures on the inner branches — 
and space in the heart, 
not shade-giving, not 
chronological...Oh transformer, logic, where are you here in this fold, 
my name being called-out now but back, behind, 
in the upper world....

 *

I have a coat I am wearing I was told to wear it.
Someone knelt down each morning to button it up.
I looked at their face, down low, near me.
What is longing? what is a star?
Watched each button a peapod getting tucked back in. 
Watched harm with its planeloads folded up in the sleeves. 
Watched grappling hooks trawl through the late-night waters. 
Watched bands of stations scan unable to ascertain.
There are fingers, friend, that never grow sluggish.
They crawl up the coat and don't miss an eyehole.
Glinting in kitchenlight.
Supervised by the traffic god.
Hissed at by grassblades that wire-up outside
their stirring rhetoric — this is your land, this is my my — 

 *

You do understanding, don't you, by looking?
The coat, which is itself a ramification, a city,
floats vulnerably above another city, ours,
the city on the hill (only with hill gone),
floats in illustration
of what once was believed, and thus was visible — 
(all things believed are visible) —
floats a Jacob's ladder with hovering empty arms, an open throat,
a place where a heart might beat if it wishes,
pockets that hang awaiting the sandy whirr of a small secret,
folds where the legs could be, with their kneeling mechanism,
the floating fatigue of an after-dinner herald,
not guilty of any treason towards life except fatigue,
a skillfully cut coat, without chronology,
filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed —
as then it is, abruptly, the last stitch laid in, the knot bit off —
hung there in Gravity, as if its innermost desire,
numberless the awaitings flickering around it,
the other created things also floating but not of the same order, no,
not like this form, built so perfectly to mantle the body,
the neck like a vase awaiting its cut flower,
a skirting barely visible where the tucks indicate
the mild loss of bearing in the small of the back,
the grammar, so strict, of the two exact shoulders —
and the law of the shouldering —
and the chill allowed to skitter up through,
and those crucial spots where the fit cannot be perfect — 
oh skirted loosening aswarm with lessenings,
with the mild pallors of unaccomplishment,
flaps night-air collects in,
folds... But the night does not annul its belief in,
the night preserves its love for, this one narrowing of infinity,
that floats up into the royal starpocked blue its ripped, distracted supervisor —
this coat awaiting recollection,
this coat awaiting the fleeting moment, the true moment, the hill,the vision of the hill,
and then the moment when the prize is lost, and the erotic tinglings of the dream of reason 
are left to linger mildly in the weave of the fabric according to the rules,
the wool gabardine mix, with its grammatical weave, 
never never destined to lose its elasticity, 
its openness to abandonment, 
its willingness to be disturbed.

 * 

July 11 ... Oaks: the organization of this tree is difficult. Speaking generally 
no doubt the determining planes are concentric, a system of brief contiguous and 
continuous tangents, whereas those of the cedar wd. roughly be called horizontals 
and those of the beech radiating but modified by droop and by a screw-set towards 
jutting points. But beyond this since the normal growth of the boughs is radiating 
there is a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve-pieces. And since the 
end shoots curl and carry young scanty leaf-stars these clubs are tapered, and I 
have seen also pieces in profile with chiseled outlines, the blocks thus made 
detached and lessening towards the end. However the knot-star is the chief thing: 
it is whorled, worked round, and this is what keeps up the illusion of the tree. 
Oaks differ much, and much turns on the broadness of the leaves, the narrower 
giving the crisped and starry and catharine-wheel forms, the broader the flat-pieced 
mailed or chard-covered ones, in wh. it is possible to see composition in dips, etc. 
But I shall study them further. It was this night I believe but possibly the next 
that I saw clearly the impossibility of staying in the Church of England.

 *

How many coats do you think it will take?

The coat was a great-coat.

The Emperor's coat was.

How many coats do you think it will take?

The undercoat is dry. What we now want is?

The sky can analyse the coat because of the rips in it. 

The sky shivers through the coat because of the rips in it. 

The rips in the sky ripen through the rips in the coat. 

There is no quarrel.

 *

I take off my coat and carry it.

 *

There is no emergency.

 *

I only made that up.

 *

Behind everything the sound of something dripping

The sound of something: I will vanish, others will come here, what is that? 

The canvas flapping in the wind like the first notes of our absence

An origin is not an action though it occurs at the very start

Desire goes travelling into the total dark of another's soul 
looking for where it breaks off

I was a hard thing to undo

 *

The life of a customer 

What came on the paper plate 

overheard nearby

an impermanence of structure

watching the lip-reading

had loved but couldn't now recognize

 *

What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important? 

What sort of a question is that he asks them.

The eye only discovers the visible slowly.

It floats before us asking to be worn,

offering "we must think about objects at the very moment 
when all their meaning is abandoning them"

and "the title provides a protection from significance" 

and "we are responsible for the universe."

 *

I have put on my doubting, my wager, it is cold.
It is an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,
so coarse and woolen, also of unknown origin,
a barely apprehensible dilution of evening into
an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,
to twitter bodily a makeshift coat,
that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know,
not shade-giving, not chronological,
my name being called out now but from out back, behind,
an outer garment, so coarse and woolen,
also of unknown origin, not shade-giving, not chronological,
each harm with its planeloads folded up in the sleeves,
you do understand, don't you, by looking?
the jacob's ladder with its floating arms its open throat,
that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know, 
filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed, 
the other created things also floating but not of the same order, 
not shade-giving, not chronological, 
you do understand, don't you, by looking? 
a neck like a vase awaiting its cut flower, 
filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,
the moment the prize is lost, the erotic tingling, 
the wool-gabardine mix, its grammatical weave
 — you do understand, don't you, by looking? —
never never destined to lose its elasticity,
it was this night I believe but possibly the next
I saw clearly the impossibility of staying
filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,
also of unknown origin, not shade-giving, not chronological 
since the normal growth of boughs is radiating 
a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve pieces —
never never destined to lose its elasticity 
my name being called out now but back, behind, 
hissing how many coats do you think it will take
"or try with eyesight to divide" (there is no quarrel)
behind everything the sound of something dripping
a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve pieces
filled with the sensation of suddenly being completed 
the wool gabardine mix, the grammatical weave,
the never-never-to-lose-its-elasticity: my name 
flapping in the wind like the first note of my absence
hissing how many coats do you think it will take
are you a test case is it an emergency
flapping in the wind the first note of something
overheard nearby an impermanence of structure
watching the lip-reading, there is no quarrel,
I will vanish, others will come here, what is that,
never never to lose the sensation of suddenly being 
completed in the wind — the first note of our quarrel —
it was this night I believe or possibly the next 
filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,
I will vanish, others will come here, what is that now 
floating in the air before us with stars a test case 
that I saw clearly the impossibility of staying
Written by Kathleen Raine | Create an image from this poem

Shells

 Reaching down arm-deep into bright water 
I gathered on white sand under waves 
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone 
Inhabit a finite world of years and days. 
I reached my arm down a myriad years 
To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor, 
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation. 

Building their beauty in three dimensions 
Over which the world recedes away from us, 
And in the fourth, that takes away ourselves 
From moment to moment and from year to year 
From first to last they remain in their continuous present. 
The helix revolves like a timeless thought, 
Instantaneous from apex to rim 
Like a dance whose figure is limpet or murex, 
cowrie or golden winkle. 

They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops 
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow, 
Harmonious shells that whisper forever in our ears, 
The world that you inhabit has not yet been created.
Written by William Cullen Bryant | Create an image from this poem

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood

 Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
And view the haunts of nature. The calm shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men, 
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
But not in vengance. God hath yoked to guilt 
Her pale tormentor, Misery. Hence these shades 
Are still the abode of gladness; the thick roof 
Of green and stirring branches is alive 
And musical with birds, that sing and sport 
In wantonness of spirit; while below 
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, 
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam. 
That waked them into life. Even the green trees 
Partake the deep contentment; as they bend 
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 
Scarce less the cleft-born wildflower seems to enjoy 
Existence, than the winged plunderer 
That sucks its sweets. The mossy rocks themselves, 
And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 
That lead from knoll to knoll a causeway rude, 
Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 
With all their roots upon them, twisting high, 
Breathe fixed tranquility. The rivulet 
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed 
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks 
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 
In its own being. Softly tread the marge, 
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, 
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 
Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass 
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Voices Of the Night

 PRELUDE.

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
With one continuous sound;-

A slumberous sound,-a sound that brings
The feelings of a dream,-
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow murmur rings
O'er meadow, lake, and stream.

And dreams of that which cannot die,
Bright visins, came to me,
As lapped in thought I used to lie,
And gaze into the summer sky,
Where the sailing clouds went by,
Like ships upon the sea;

Dreams that the soul of youth engage
Ere Fancy has been quelled;
Old legends of the monkish page.
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And chronicles of Eld.

And, loving still these quaint old themes,
Even in the city's throng
I feel the freshness of the streams,
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams,
Water the green land of dreams,
The holy land of song.

Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings
The Spring, clothed like a bride,
When nestling buds unfold their wings,
And bishop's-caps have golden rings,
Musing upon many things,
I sought the woodlands wide.

The green trees whispered low and mild,
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child
And rocked me in their arms so wild!
Still they looked at me and smiled
As if I were a boy;

And ever whispered, mild and low,
"Come, be a child once more!"
And waved their long arms to and fro,
And beckoned solemnly and slow;
O, I could not choose but go
Into the woodlands hoar;

Into the blithe and breathing air,
Into the solemn wood.
Solemn and silent everywhere!
Nature with folded hands seemed there,
Kneeling at her evening prayer!
Like one in prayer I stood.

Before me rose an avenue
Of tall and sombrous pines;
Abroad their fan-like branches grew,
And, where the sunshine darted throught
Spread a vapor soft and blue,
In long and sloping lines.

And, falling on my weary brain,
Like a fast-falling shower,
The dreams of youth came back again,
Low lispings of the summer rain,
Dropping on the ripened grain,
As once upon the flower.

Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seemed to say,
"It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!

"The land of Song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise;
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angels' wings.

"Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be
Not mountains capped with snow,
Nor forests sounding like the sea,
Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly,
Where the woodlands bend to see
The bending heavens below.

"There is a forest where the din
Of iron branches sounds!
A mighty river roara between,
And whosoever looks therein,
Sees the heavens all black with sin,-
Sees not ita depths, nor bounds.

"Athwart the swinging branches cast,
Soft rays of sunshine pour;
Then comes the fearful wintry blast;
Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast;
Pallid lips say, 'It is past!
We can return no more!'

"Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Yes, into Life's deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright,-
Be these henceforth thy theme."

Book: Reflection on the Important Things