My life has been the poem

The arts and sciences,And a thousand appliances;The wind that blowsIs all that any body knows.

The work we choose should be our own,God leaves alone.If with light head erect I sing,Though all the Muses lend their force,From my poor love of anything,The verse is weak and shallow as its source.But if with bended neck I gropeListening behind me for my wit,With faith superior to hope,More anxious to keep back than…

And in its fashion’s hourly changeIt all things else repairs.In vain I look for change abroad,And can no difference find,Till some new ray of peace uncalledIllumes my inmost mind.What is it gilds the trees and clouds,And paints the heavens so gay,But yonder fast-abiding lightWith its unchanging ray?Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,Upon a…

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

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…

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…