Written by
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And the billows of clouds that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live, to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see?
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Written by
Robert Burns |
DOST thou not rise, indignant shade,
And smile wi’ spurning scorn,
When they wha wad hae starved thy life,
Thy senseless turf adorn?
Helpless, alane, thou clamb the brae,
Wi’ meikle honest toil,
And claught th’ unfading garland there—
Thy sair-worn, rightful spoil.
And wear it thou! and call aloud
This axiom undoubted—
Would thou hae Nobles’ patronage?
First learn to live without it!
To whom hae much, more shall be given,
Is every Great man’s faith;
But he, the helpless, needful wretch,
Shall lose the mite he hath.
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