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...saw him did enchant the mind,
For on his visage was in little drawn
What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.

'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear
Like unshorn velvet on that termless skin
Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear:
Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.

'His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William

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...d inside waited the king.
Its rays of light blazed over a bevy of lands. (ll. 301-11)

Then the battle-brave soldier showed them
the bright house of heady men, so that they could
aim straight for it. That certain war-veteran
steered his horse away, speaking a word after them:
“It’s time for me to turn back—may the All-wielding Father
keep you all sound with gracious care on your mission.
I wish to resume my watch by the sea against wrathful hosts!” (ll. 312-19)

 
...Read more of this...

by Anonymous,

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...lished ivory,
Till from the waist the peplos falling down
Left visible the secret mystery
Which to no lover will Athena show,
The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of
snow.

Those who have never known a lover's sin
Let them not read my ditty, it will be
To their dull ears so musicless and thin
That they will have no joy of it, but ye
To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile,
Ye who have learned who Eros is, - O listen yet awhile.

A little spac...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar

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...was not thy glory hymned
By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon,
And died to show that Milton's England still could bear a son!

And yet I cannot tread the Portico
And live without desire, fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.

Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent li...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar

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...wn my pants 
and moon the executioner 
as well as paste raisins on my breasts? 
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants 
and show my little cunny to Tom 
and Albert? They wee-wee funny. 
I wee-wee like a squaw. 
I have ink but no pen, still 
I dream that I can piss in God's eye. 
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper. 
It's so practical, la de dah. 
The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix, 
is being a little girl in the first place. 
Not all the books of the world will change that. 
I h...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne

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...ir feet; some also shouted;
Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence;
And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,
Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,
Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.
There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines
When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise
Among immortals when a God gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load
His tongue with the filll weight of utterless thought,
With thunder, and with music, and with ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John

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...
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. 
...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William

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...hich my footsteps fell, 
 And though it kindled from the nether hell, 
 Or from the Star that all men leads, alike 
 It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike 
 The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. 

 How first I entered on that path astray, 
 Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know. 
 When gained my feet the upward, lighted way, 
 I backward gazed, as one the drowning sea, 
 The deep strong tides, has baffled, and panting lies, 
 On the shelved shore, and tu...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante

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...e in vain his eye could scarcely scan, 
Nor glean experience from his fellow-man; 
But what he had beheld he shunn'd to show, 
As hardly worth a stranger's care to know; 
If still more prying such inquiry grew, 
His brow fell darker, and his words more few. 

VII. 

Not unrejoiced to see him once again, 
Warm was his welcome to the haunts of men; 
Born of high lineage, link'd in high command, 
He mingled with the magnates of his land; 
Join'd the carousals of the great and ga...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

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...nt to hurry you, Meserve,
But if you’re going— Say you’ll stay, you know?
But let me raise this curtain on a scene,
And show you how it’s piling up against you.
You see the snow-white through the white of frost?
Ask Helen how far up the sash it’s climbed
Since last we read the gage.”

“It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stu...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert

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...ck one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn. 

Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age; 
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am
 silent, and go bathe and admire myself. 

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean; 
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar
 than th...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt

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...ils of the sea.

And he saw in a little picture,
Tiny and far away,
His mother sitting in Egbert's hall,
And a book she showed him, very small,
Where a sapphire Mary sat in stall
With a golden Christ at play.

It was wrought in the monk's slow manner,
From silver and sanguine shell,
Where the scenes are little and terrible,
Keyholes of heaven and hell.

In the river island of Athelney,
With the river running past,
In colours of such simple creed
All things sprang at him, sun ...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K

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...nd heavy melancholy,
1.10 Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly.
1.11 Childhood was cloth'd in white, and given to show,
1.12 His spring was intermixed with some snow.
1.13 Upon his head a Garland Nature set:
1.14 Of Daisy, Primrose, and the Violet.
1.15 Such cold mean flowers (as these) blossom betime,
1.16 Before the Sun hath throughly warm'd the clime.
1.17 His hobby striding, did not ride, but run,
1.18 And in his hand an hour-glass new begun,
1.19 In dangers every m...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne

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...r blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring. 

7
In thee my spring of life hath bid the while
A rose unfold beyond the summer's best,
The mystery of joy made manifest
In love's self-answering and awakening smile;
Whereby the lips in wonder reconcile
Passion with peace, and show desire at rest,--
A grace of silence by the Gre...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour

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...Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires 
Lost in the quagmire! Many of you, yea most, 
Return no more: ye think I show myself 
Too dark a prophet: come now, let us meet 
The morrow morn once more in one full field 
Of gracious pastime, that once more the King, 
Before ye leave him for this Quest, may count 
The yet-unbroken strength of all his knights, 
Rejoicing in that Order which he made." 

`So when the sun broke next from under ground, 
All the great table of our A...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

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...To join some comrades of the day,
     Yet often paused, so strange the road,
     So wondrous were the scenes it showed.
     XI.

     The western waves of ebbing day
     Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
     Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
     Was bathed in floods of living fire.
     But not a setting beam could glow
     Within the dark ravines below,
     Where twined the path in shadow hid,
     Round many a rocky pyramid,
     Shooting abr...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter

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...d relics of old Gothic manners, 

X 

Form'd a sepulchral melo-drame. Of all 
The fools who flack's to swell or see the show, 
Who cared about the corpse? The funeral 
Made the attraction, and the black the woe. 
There throbbed not there a thought which pierced the pall; 
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low, 
It seamed the mockery of hell to fold 
The rottenness of eighty years in gold. 

XI 

So mix his body with the dust! It might 
Return to what it must far sooner, w...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)

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...in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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...m more entrancing
Than better kings, of course. 
At a strange early hour, 
In St. James's palace yard, 
We watched in a shower 
The changing of the guard.
And I said, what a pity,
To have just a week to spend,
When London is a city
Whose beauties never end!

VI 
When the sun shines on England, it atones 
For low-hung leaden skies, and rain and dim 
Moist fogs that paint the verdure on her stones 
And fill her gentle rivers to the brim. 
When the sun shines on England, shafts ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer

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...itter love.

The subject of my prayers
Were you, moody, calm, and austere.
There first the groom came to me
Having shown me the pathway holy,
And that sad muse of mine
Led me like one blind.


 * II * 


December 9, 1913
The darkest days of the year
Must become the most clear.
I can't find words to compare -
Your lips are so tender and dear.

Only to raise your eyes do not dare,
Keeping the life of me.
They're lighter than vials premier,
And deadlier...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna

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