LIGHT-WINGED Smoke, Icarian bird,

The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,The innumerable days.I hide in the solar glory,I am dumb in the pealing song,I rest on the pitch of the torrent,In slumber I am strong.No numbers have counted my tallies,No tribes my house can fill,I sit by the shining Fount of LifeAnd pour the deluge still;And ever by delicate powersGathering…

Spirits and elementsHave their descents.Night and day, year on year,High and low, far and near,These are our own aspects,These are our own regrets.Ye gods of the shore,Who abide evermore,I see you far headland,Stretching on either hand;I hear the sweet evening soundsFrom your undecaying grounds;Cheat me no more with time,Take me to your clime.

That in my action I may soar as highAs I can now discern with this clear eye.And next in value, which thy kindness lends,That I may greatly disappoint my friends,Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.That my weak hand may equal my firm faithAnd my life…

But I could not both liveand utter it.

By an unnatural breeding in and in.I say, Turn it out doors,Into the moors.I love a life whose plot is simple,And does not thicken with every pimple,A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,That makes the universe no worse than ‘t finds it.I love an earnest soul,Whose mighty joy and sorrowAre not drowned in…

Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,And will not mind to hit their proper targe.Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again,What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true,Nor Shakespeare’s books, unless his books were men.Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,What care I for…

To disappointThe amber of waterAt a high soul

By an unnatural breeding in and in.I say, Turn it out doors,Into the moors.I love a life whose plot is simple,And does not thicken with every pimple,A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,That makes the universe no worse than ‘t finds it.I love an earnest soul,Whose mighty joy and sorrowAre not drowned in…

I will abide that other day,Those other lands ye tell.Has time no leisure left for these,The acts that ye rehearse?Is not eternity a leaseFor better deeds than verse?‘Tis sweet to hear of heroes dead,To know them still alive,But sweeter if we earn their bread,And in us they survive.Our life should feed the springs of fameWith…

Untarnished fair as is the violetOr anemone, when the spring strews themBy some meandering rivulet, which makeThe best philosophy untrue that aimsBut to console man for his grievancesI have remembered when the winter came,High in my chamber in the frosty nights,When in the still light of the cheerful moon,On every twig and rail and jutting…

Dangling this way and that, their linksWere made so loose and wide,Methinks,For milder weather.A bunch of violets without their roots,And sorrel intermixed,Encircled by a wisp of strawOnce coiled about their shoots,The lawBy which I’m fixed.A nosegay which Time clutched from outThose fair Elysian fields,With weeds and broken stems, in haste,Doth make the rabble routThat wasteThe…

Fountain-head and source of rivers,Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,And napkin spread by fays;Drifting meadow of the air,Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,And in whose fenny labyrinthThe bittern booms and heron wades;Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,Bear only perfumes and the scentOf healing herbs to just men’s fields!