The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,--visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,-- Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant...

Universal

Percy Bysshe Shelley

519 words

Poetry

Paradise Lost: Book 11

Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn From his displeasure; in whose look serene, When angry most he seemed and most severe, What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone?

A Tale of Society As It Is: From Facts, 1811

She was an aged woman; and the years Which she had numbered on her toilsome way Had bowed her natural powers to decay. She was an aged woman; yet the ray Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears, Pressed into...

First Anniversary

Like the vain curlings of the watery maze, Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise, So Man, declining always, disappears In the weak circles of increasing years; And his short tumults of themselves compose, While flowing Time above his head does close.

The Strayed Reveller

1 Faster, faster, 2 O Circe, Goddess, 3 Let the wild, thronging train 4 The bright procession 5 Of eddying forms, 6 Sweep through my soul! 7 Thou standest, smiling 8 Down on me!

The Zucca

Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring, And infant Winter laughed upon the land All cloudlessly and cold;--when I, desiring More in this world than any understand, Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring, Had left the earth bare...

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales. The Persons The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of THYRSIS. COMUS, with his Crew. FIRST BROTHER. SECOND BROTHER. SABRINA, the Nymph. The Chief...

Messiah.

A SACRED ECLOGUE, IN IMITATION OF VIRGIL'S 'POLLIO.' Ye Nymphs of Solyma! begin the song: To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids, Delight no more--O Thou...

Count Gismond

Christ God who savest man, save most Of men Count Gismond who saved me! Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Chose time and place and company To suit it; when he struck at length My honour, 'twas with all his strength.

296. The Five Carlins: An Election Ballad

THERE was five Carlins in the South, They fell upon a scheme, To send a lad to London town, To bring them tidings hame. Nor only bring them tidings hame, But do their errands there, And aiblins gowd and honor...

Scenes From the Faust of Goethe

SCENE 1.--PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN. THE LORD AND THE HOST OF HEAVEN. ENTER THREE ARCHANGELS.

Epilogue to the Satires.

IN TWO DIALOGUES. DIALOGUE I. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print, And when it comes, the court see nothing in 't. You grow correct, that once with rapture writ, And are, besides, too moral for a wit. Decay of parts, alas!

56. Epistle to Davie, A Brother Poet

WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, An’ bar the doors wi’ driving snaw, An’ hing us owre the ingle, I set me down to pass the time, An’ spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme, In hamely, westlin jingle.

The Dream

Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality, And dreams in their developement have breath, And tears, and...

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

1423 words

Poetry

The Peace-Pipe

On the Mountains of the Prairie, On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry, Gitche Manito, the mighty, He the Master of Life, descending, On the red crags of the quarry Stood erect, and called the nations, Called the tribes of men together.

Universal

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

794 words

Poetry

The Canterbury Tales. The Canon's Yeoman's Tale.

THE PROLOGUE. WHEN ended was the life of Saint Cecile, Ere we had ridden fully five mile, At Boughton-under-Blee us gan o'ertake A man, that clothed was in clothes black, And underneath he wore a white surplice.

Ode From the French

We do not curse thee, Waterloo!

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

526 words

Poetry

The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant's Tale.

THE PROLOGUE. "Weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow, I have enough, on even and on morrow," Quoth the Merchant, "and so have other mo', That wedded be; I trow that it be so; For well I wot it fareth so by me.

How They Brought the Good News From Ghent to Aix

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights...

Hervé Riel

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,--woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came...

The Vanities of Life

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.--_Solomon What are life's joys and gains? What pleasures crowd its ways, That man should take such pains To seek them all his days? Sift this untoward strife On which thy mind is bent: See...

Paradise Regained: The Third Book

So spake the Son of God; and Satan stood A while as mute, confounded what to say, What to reply, confuted and convinced Of his weak arguing and fallacious drift; At length, collecting all his serpent wiles, With soothing words...

Troilus and Criseyde: Book IV

But al to litel, weylaway the whyle, Lasteth swich Ioye, y-thonked be Fortune!

Universal

Geoffrey Chaucer

11680 words