Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Playful Lines
From a Letter to Reynolds, July 31, 1818
Away with old Hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There’s a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a pitiful rummer,
My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in brain
A Delphian pain.—
Then follow, my Caius, then follow;
On the green of the hill
We will drink our fill
Of golden sunshine,
Till our brains intertwine
With the glory and grace of Apollo!
God of the meridian,
And of the east and west,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward pressed.—
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;
And leaves a gulph austere
To be filled with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul’s fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle’s claws.—
And is not this the cause
Of madness?—God of song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear;
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy;
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see thy bowers
More unalarmed!
To The Nile
Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing’s inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest them a space ’twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand;
Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web,
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.
And yet I never look on midnight sky,
But I behold thine eyes’ well memoried light;
I cannot look upon the rose’s dye,
But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight;
I cannot look on any budding flower,
But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips,
And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour
Its sweets in the wrong sense:—Thou dost eclipse
Every delight with sweet remembering,
And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.
Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds, Ending—
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell.”
Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sum,—
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,—
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun.
Blue! ’Tis the life of waters—ocean
And all its vassal streams: pools numberless
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark- blue nativeness.
Blue! gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers—
Forget- me-not,—the blue-bell,—and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
To J. H. Reynolds
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day’s journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would
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