Who idly look to other skies,Expecting life by other ways.Amidst such boundless wealth without,I only still am poor within,The birds have sung their summer out,But still my spring does not begin.Shall I then wait the autumn wind,Compelled to seek a milder day,And leave no curious nest behind,No woods still echoing to my lay?
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…
–RaleighThe full-orbed moon with unchanged rayMounts up the eastern sky,Not doomed to these short nights for aye,But shining steadily.She does not wane, but my fortune,Which her rays do not bless,My wayward path declineth soon,But she shines not the less.And if she faintly glimmers here,And paled is her light,Yet alway in her proper sphereShe’s mistress of…
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…
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…
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…
Ye sweet waters of my brain,When shall I look,Or cast the hook,In your waves again?Silver eels,Wooden creels,These the baits that still allure,And dragon-flyThat floated by,May they still endure?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful pathIn some far summer stratum of the sky,While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,And far and near upon the leafless shrubsThe snow dust still emits a silver light.Under the hedge, where drift banks are their screen,The titmice now…
Sole meat and sweetest drink,And close connecting linkTween heaven and earth.I only know it is, not how or why,My greatest happiness;However hard I try,Not if I were to die,Can I explain.I fain would ask my friend how it can be,But when the time arrives,Then Love is more lovelyThan anything to me,And so I’m dumb.For if…
Still my vision will be clear,Still my life will not be drear,To the center all is near.Where I sit there is my throne.If age choose to sit apart,If age choose, give me the start,Take the sap and leave the heart.
