Part vii
. xi._
A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.
_The Witch of Atlas. Stanza 5._
Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
_Music, when soft Voices die._
I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.
_Rarely, rarely comest Thou._
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.
_To Jane. The keen Stars were twinkling._
The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
_One Word is too often profaned._
You lie--under a mistake,[567-1] For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.
_Translation of Calderon's Magico Prodigioso. Scene i._
How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep.
_Queen Mab. i._
Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
_Queen Mab. iii._
Heaven's ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
_Queen Mab. iv._
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.[568-1]
_A Defence of Poetry._
FOOTNOTES:
[565-1] See Bacon, page 166.
[566-1] The pleasure of love is in loving. We are much happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.--ROCHEFOUCAULD: _Maxim 259._
[566-2] See Butler, page 216.
[567-1] See Swift, page 292.
[568-1] See Coleridge, page 504.
J. HOWARD PAYNE. 1792-1852.
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there 's no place like home;[568-2] A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain, Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gayly, that came at my call, Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
_Home, Sweet Home._ (From the opera of "Clari, the Maid of Milan.")
FOOTNOTES:
[568-2] Home is home, though it be never so homely.--CLARKE: _Paroemiologia, p. 101._ (1639.)
SEBA SMITH. 1792-1868.
The cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And 'mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she press'd, The babe was sleeping on her breast.
_The Snow Storm._
JOHN KEBLE. 1792-1866.
The trivial round, the common task, Would furnish all we ought to ask.
_Morning._
Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die? Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
_The Christian Year. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity._
'T is sweet, as year by year we lose Friends out of sight, in faith to muse How grows in Paradise our store.
_Burial of the Dead._
Abide with me from morn till eve, For without Thee I cannot live; Abide with me when night is nigh, For without Thee I dare not die.
_Evening._
FELICIA D. HEMANS. 1794-1835.
The stately homes of England,-- How beautiful they stand, Amid their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land!
_The Homes of England._
The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine, The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod: They have left unstained what there they found,-- Freedom to worship God.
_Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers._
Through the laburnum's dropping gold Rose the light shaft of Orient mould, And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.
_The Palm-Tree._
They grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee: Their graves are severed far and wide By mount and stream and sea.
_The Graves of a Household._
Alas for love, if thou wert all, And naught beyond, O Earth!
_The Graves of a Household._
The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.
_Casabianca._
Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, And stars to set; but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
_The Hour of Death._
Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.
_Tyrolese Evening Song._
In the busy haunts of men.
_Tale of the Secret Tribunal.