He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure.
Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams.

Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

But Shapes that come not at an earthly call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.

Shalt show us how divine a thing
A Woman may be made.

But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

When his veering gait

And every motion of his starry train
Seem governed by a strain.

Laodamia.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Dion.

To a Young Lady.

Ibid.

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,
That no philosophy can lift.

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

Presentiments.

On the Power of Sound. xii.

There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon.

Peter Bell. Prologue. Stanza 1.

The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me, her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.

Full twenty times was Peter feared,
For once that Peter was respected.
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!

On a fair prospect some have looked,
And felt, as I have heard them say,
As if the moving time had been
A thing as steadfast as the scene
On which they gazed themselves away.

As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!

The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration.

Stanza 27.

Part i. Stanza 3.

Stanza 12.

Stanza 15.

Stanza 16.

Stanza 26.1

Miscellaneous Sonnets. Part i. xxx.

1 The original edition (London, 1819, 8vo) had the following as the fourth stanza from the end of Part i., which was omitted in all subsequent editions:

Is it a party in a parlour?

Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, —

Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,

But, as you by their faces see,

All silent and all damned.

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.

Miscellaneous Sonnets. Part i. xxxiii.

Great God! I'd rather be

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 wreathed horn.

To the solid ground

Ibid.

Of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye.
Part i. xxxiv.

"T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

And, when a damp

Part i. xxxv.

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, alas! too few.

Part ii. i.

Soft is the music that would charm for ever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly. Part ii. ix.

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will;
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Part ii. xxxvi.

How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free

Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold.

Part iii. xxvii.

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven

With vain endeavour,

And memory of Earth's bitter leaven,

Effaced for ever. Thoughts suggested on the Banks of Nith.

The best of what we do and are,

Long after it was heard no more.

Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,
Frozen by distance.

A famous man is Robin Hood,
The English ballad-singer's joy.

Ibid.

Address to Kilchurn Castle.

Because the good old rule

Sufficeth them, the simple plan,

Rob Roy's Grave.

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

Ibid.

Let beeves and home-bred kine partake
The sweets of Burn-mill meadow;
The swan on still St. Mary's Lake
Float double, swan and shadow!

Yarrow Unvisited.

O for a single hour of that Dundee
Who on that day the word of onset gave!1

A remnant of uneasy light.

Sonnet, in the Pass of Killicranky.
The Matron of Jedborough.

But thou, that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation.

Yarrow Visited.

Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is passed away.

Poems dedicated to National Independence. Parti. On the
Extinction of the Venetian Republic.

Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

To Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Two voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland.

1 It was on this occasion (the failure in energy of Lord Mar at the battle of Sheriffmuir) that Gordon of Glenbucket made the celebrated exclamation, "O for an hour of Dundee!"-Mahon's History of England, Vol. i. p. 184.

O for one hour of blind old Dandolo,

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!

Byron, Childe Harold, Canto iv. Stanza 12.