style="font-size:15px;"> And nothing else saw all day long;For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery’s song.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz’d and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes —
So kiss’d to sleep.
And there we slumber’d on the moss,
And there I dream’d, ah woe betide
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry’d— “Le belle Dame sans mercy
Hath thee in thrall!”
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
A sonnet written on a blank page in Shakespeare’s Poems, facing ‘A Lover’s Complaint’
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
Staffa
Not Aladdin magian
Ever such a work began;
Not the wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see;
Not St John, in Patmos’ Isle,
In the passion of his toil,
When he saw the churches seven,
Golden aisl’d, built up in heaven,
Gaz’d at such a rugged wonder.
As I stood its roofing under,
Lo! I saw one sleeping there,
On the marble cold and bare.
While the surges wash’d his feet.
And his garments white did beat
Drench’d about the sombre rocks,
On his neck his well-grown locks,
Lifted dry above the main,
Were upon the curl again.
‘What is this? and what art thou?’
Whisper’d I, and touch’d his brow;
‘What art thou? and what is this?’
Whisper’d I, and strove to kiss
The spirit’s hand, to wake his eyes;
Up he started in a trice:
‘I am Lycidas,’ said he,
‘Fam’d in funeral minstrelsy!
This was architectur’d thus
By the great Oceanus! -
Here his mighty waters play
Hollow organs all the day;
Here by turns his dolphins all,
Finny palmers great and small,
Come to pay devotion due -
Each a mouth of pearls must strew.
Many a mortal of these days.
Dares to pass our sacred ways,
Dares to touch audaciously
This Cathedral of the Sea!
I have been the pontiff-priest
Where the waters never rest, Where a fledgy seabird choir
Soars for ever; holy fire
I have hid from mortal man;
Proteus is my Sacristan.
But the dulled eye of mortal
