Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Lines to Fanny
What can I do to drive away
Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?
When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there:
When, howe’er poor or particolour’d things, My muse had wings,
And ever ready was to take her course
Whither I bent her force,
Unintellectual, yet divine to me; -
Divine, I say! - What seabird o’er the sea
Is a philosopher the while he goes
Winging along where the great water throes?
How shall I do
To get anew
Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more Above, above
The reach of fluttering Love,
And make him cower lowly while I soar?
Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,
A heresy and schism,
Foisted into the canon law’ of love; -
No, - wine is only sweet to happy men:
More dismal cares
Seize on me unawares, -
Where shall I learn to get my peace again? To banish thoughts of that most hateful land
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand
Where they were wreck’d and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown’d of any weedy-haired gods;
Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;
Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag’d meads Make lean and lank the starv’d ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.
O, for some sunny spell
To dissipate the shadows of this hell!
Say they are gone, - with the new dawning light
Steps forth my lady bright!
O, let me once more rest
My soul upon that dazzling breast!
Let once again these aching arms be plac’d, The tender gaolers of thy waist!
And let me feel that warm breath here and there
To spread a rapture in my very hair, -
O, the sweetness of the pain!
Give me those lips again!
Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!
To Haydon
Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively on these mighty things;
Forgive me that I have not Eagle’s wings -
That what I want I know not where to seek:
And think that I would not be over meek
In rolling out upfollow’d thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak -
Think too, that all those numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture’s hem? For when men star’d at what was most divine
With browless idiotism - o’erwise phlegm -
Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine
Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them.
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I
