She was a phantom of delight

The buzzing dor-hawk, round and round, is wheeling,–That solitary birdIs all that can be heardIn silence deeper far than that of deepest noon!Confiding Glow-worms, ’tis a nightPropitious to your earth-born light!But, where the scattered stars are seenIn hazy straits the clouds between,Each, in his station twinkling not,Seems changed into a pallid spot.The mountains against heaven’s…

Then–all at once the air was still,And showers of hailstones pattered round.Where leafless oaks towered high above,I sat within an undergroveOf tallest hollies, tall and green;A fairer bower was never seen.From year to year the spacious floorWith withered leaves is covered o’er,And all the year the bower is green.But see! where’er the hailstones dropThe withered…

Was but an Infant in the lapWhen first I looked on Yarrow;Once more, by Newark’s Castle-gateLong left without a warder,I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee,Great Minstrel of the Border!Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,Their dignity installingIn gentle bosoms, while sere leavesWere on the bough, or falling;But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed-The forest…

It is not from unwillingness to praise,Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;More thou deserv’st; but ‘this’ man gives to man,Brother to brother, ‘this’ is all we can.Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dearShall find thee through all changes of the year:This Oak points out thy grave; the silent treeWill…

Answering to the shouting Cuckoo,Giving to her sound for sound!Unsolicited replyTo a babbling wanderer sent;Like her ordinary cry,Like–but oh, how different!Hears not also mortal Life?Hear not we, unthinking Creatures!Slaves of folly, love, or strife–Voices of two different natures?Have not ‘we’ too?–yes, we haveAnswers, and we know not whence;Echoes from beyond the grave,Recognised intelligence!Such rebounds our…

While a fair region round the traveller liesWhich he forbears again to look upon;Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,The work of Fancy, or some happy toneOf meditation, slipping in betweenThe beauty coming and the beauty gone.If Thought and Love desert us, from that dayLet us break off all commerce with the Muse:With Thought and…

Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp,So burns yon Taper ‘mid a black recessOf mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:The lake below reflects it not; the sky,Muffled in clouds, affords no companyTo mitigate and cheer its loneliness.Yet, round the body of that joyless ThingWhich sends so far its melancholy light,Perhaps are seated in domestic ringA gay society with faces…

Dead in the sinless time of infancy,Attire the peaceful corse in vestments white;And, in like sign of cloudless triumph bright,They bind the unoffending creature’s browsWith happy garlands of the pure white rose:Then do a festal company uniteIn choral song; and, while the uplifted crossOf Jesus goes before, the child is borneUncovered to his grave: ’tis…

But thou art no such perfect thing:Rejoice that thou art not!Heed not tho’ none should call thee fair;So, Mary, let it beIf nought in loveliness compareWith what thou art to me.True beauty dwells in deep retreats,Whose veil is unremovedTill heart with heart in concord beats,And the lover is beloved.

The rain came heavily and fell in floods;But now the sun is rising calm and bright;The birds are singing in the distant woods;Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.IIAll things that love the sun are out of…

Some lying fast at anchor in the road,Some veering up and down, one knew not why.A goodly vessel did I then espyCome like a giant from a haven broad;And lustily along the bay she strode,Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.The ship was nought to me, nor I to her,Yet I pursued her with a…

My life through its first years, and measured backThe way I travell’d when I first beganTo love the woods and fields; the passion yetWas in its birth, sustain’d, as might befal,By nourishment that came unsought, for still,From week to week, from month to month, we liv’dA round of tumult: duly were our gamesProlong’d in summer…