To a Mouse O’ foggage green!
Robert Burns An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plow, November, 25 Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ wast,
1785. An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie, Thou thought to dwell,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 30 Out thro’ thy cell.
Wi’ bickering brattle! That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
5 I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Wi’ murd’ring pattle! Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion But house or hald,
Has broken Nature’s social union, 35 To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ justifies that ill opinion, An’ cranreuch cauld!
10 Which makes thee startle But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, In proving foresight may be vain:
An’ fellow mortal! The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; 40 Gang aft agley,
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
15 A daimen-icker in a thrave For promis’d joy!
’S a sma request: Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave, The present only toucheth thee:
An’ never miss ’t! 45 But och! I backward cast my e’e,
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! On prospects drear!
20 It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin! An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane, I guess an’ fear!
The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
10 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Kubla Khan Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 30 Ancestral voices prophesying war!
A stately pleasure-dome decree: The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Floated midway on the waves;
Through caverns measureless to man Where was heard the mingled measure
5 Down to a sunless sea. From the fountain and the caves.
So twice five miles of fertile ground 35 It was a miracle of rare device,
With walls and towers were girdled round: A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, A damsel with a dulcimer
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; In a vision once I saw:
10 And here were forests ancient as the hills, It was an Abyssinian maid,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 40 And on her dulcimer she played,
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Singing of Mount Abora.
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! Could I revive within me
A savage place! as holy and enchanted Her symphony and song,
15 As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
By woman wailing for her demon-lover! 45 That with music loud and long,
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, I would build that dome in air,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
A mighty fountain momently was forced: And all who heard should see them there,
20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 50 His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: Weave a circle round him thrice,
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever And close your eyes with holy dread,
It flung up momently the sacred river. For he on honeydew hath fed,
25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion And drunk the milk of Paradise.
She Walks in Beauty
George Gordon, Lord Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
5 Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
10 Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
15 The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
The Destruction of Sennacherib
George Gordon, Lord Byron
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
5 Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
10 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
15 And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
20 The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5 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:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
10 “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
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.
Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley 35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
I For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
IV
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
10 Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) The impulse of thy strength, only less free
With living hues and odors plain and hill: Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear! The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
II Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
commotion, Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
55 A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head V
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Of the dying year, to which this closing night 60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
65 And, by the incantation of this verse,
III
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Be through my lips to unawakened earth
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, 70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley Soul in secret hour
45 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert, Like a glow-worm golden
That from Heaven, or near it, In a dell of dew,
Pourest thy full heart Scattering unbeholden
5 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Its aereal hue
50 Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the
Higher still and higher view!
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire; Like a rose embowered
The blue deep thou wingest, In its own green leaves,
10 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
In the golden lightning 55 Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged
Of the sunken sun, thieves:
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run; Sound of vernal showers
15 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
The pale purple even All that ever was
Melts around thy flight; 60 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass:
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad daylight Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
20 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Keen as are the arrows Praise of love or wine
Of that silver sphere, 65 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear Chorus Hymeneal,
25 Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there. Or triumphal chant,
Matched with thine would be all
All the earth and air But an empty vaunt,
With thy voice is loud, 70 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud What objects are the fountains
30 The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is Of thy happy strain?
overflowed. What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What thou art we know not; 75 What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not With thy clear keen joyance
Drops so bright to see Languor cannot be:
35 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Like a Poet hidden 80 Thou lovest—but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden, Waking or asleep,
Till the world is wrought Thou of death must deem
40 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Like a high-born maiden 85 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter Better than all measures
With some pain is fraught; Of delightful sound,
90 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest Better than all treasures
thought. That in books are found,
100 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear; Teach me half the gladness
If we were things born That thy brain must know,
Not to shed a tear, Such harmonious madness
95 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. From my lips would flow
105 The world should listen then—as I am listening now.
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats 25 She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, And sure in language strange she said
Alone and palely loitering? “I love thee true.”
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing. She took me to her elfin grot,
30 And there she wept and sighed full sore,
5 O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, And there I shut her wild wild eyes
So haggard and so woebegone? With kisses four.
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done. And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!
I see a lily on thy brow, 35 The latest dream I ever dreamed
10 With anguish moist and fever dew, On the cold hill side.
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too. I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
I met a lady in the meads, They cried, “La Belle Dame sans Merci
Full beautiful—a fairy’s child, 40 Hath thee in thrall!”
15 Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild. I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
I made a garland for her head, And I awoke, and found me here,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; On the cold hill’s side.
She looked at me as she did love,
20 And made sweet moan. 45 And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
I set her on my pacing steed, Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And nothing else saw all day long, And no birds sing.
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A fairy’s song.
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats 5
1 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Wherewith the seasonable month endows
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 45 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;
One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk: White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
5 ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
But being too happy in thine happiness— And mid-May’s eldest child,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, The coming musk rose, full of dewy wine,
In some melodious plot 50 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
10 Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 6
2 Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
O, for a draft of vintage! that hath been Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth, To take into the air my quiet breath;
Tasting of Flora and the country green, 55 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
15 O for a beaker full of the warm South, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, In such an ecstasy!
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
And purple-stainèd mouth; 60 To thy high requiem become a sod.
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
20 And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 7
3 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget The voice I hear this passing night was heard
What thou among the leaves hast never known, In ancient days by emperor and clown:
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 65 Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for
25 Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, home,
Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
dies; The same that ofttimes hath
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
And leaden-eyed despairs, 70 Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
30 Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow. 8
4 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 75 Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
35 Already with thee! tender is the night, Up the hillside; and now ’tis buried deep
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, In the next valley glades:
Clustered around by all her starry Fays; Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
But here there is no light, 80 Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
40 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy
ways.
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats And, little town, thy streets forevermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
1 40 Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
5
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
5 What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Of deities or mortals, or of both, Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 45 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? When old age shall this generation waste,
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
10 What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
50 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
2
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
15 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,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
20 Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
3
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs forever new;
25 More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
30 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
4
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
35 What little town by river or seashore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?