Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,...
Love's worshippers alone can know The thousand mysteries that are his; His blazing torch, his twanging bow, His blooming age are mysteries. A charming science, but the day...
The earth was sown with early flowers, The heavens were blue and bright, I met a youthful cavalier As lovely as the light. I knew him not, but in my heart His graceful image lies,...
Blessed, yet sinful one, and broken-hearted! The crowd are pointing at the thing forlorn, In wonder and in scorn! Thou weepest days of innocence departed; Thou weepest, and thy tears have power to move...
A power is on the earth and in the air, From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, From the hot steam and from the fiery glare....
They talk of short-lived pleasure, be it so, Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;...
'Tis noon. At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee And worshipped, while the husbandmen withdrew From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount,...
Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun! One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air, Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run, Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare....
Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath, When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death....
Far back in the ages, The plough with wreaths was crowned; The hands of kings and sages Entwined the chaplet round; Till men of spoil disdained the toil By which the world was nourished,...
I buckle to my slender side The pistol and the scimitar, And in my maiden flower and pride Am come to share the tasks of war. And yonder stands my fiery steed, That paws the ground and neighs to go,...
Chained in the market-place he stood, A man of giant frame, Amid the gathering multitude That shrunk to hear his name, All stern of look and strong of limb, His dark eye on the ground:...
When to the common rest that crowns our days, Called in the noon of life, the good man goes, Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays His silver temples in their last repose;...
To the town of Atienza, Molina's brave Alcayde, The courteous and the valorous, led forth his bold brigade. The Moor came back in triumph, he came without a wound,...
Here are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled pines, That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet...
Gone is the long, long winter night; Look, my beloved one! How glorious, through his depths of light, Rolls the majestic sun! The willows, waked from winter's death,...
Erewhile, on England's pleasant shores, our sires Left not their churchyards unadorned with shades Or blossoms; and indulgent to the strong And natural dread of man's last home, the grave,...
I would not always reason. The straight path Wearies us with its never-varying lines, And we grow melancholy. I would make Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit...
'Tis not with gilded sabres That gleam in baldricks blue, Nor nodding plumes in caps of Fez, Of gay and gaudy hue, But, habited in mourning weeds, Come marching from afar,...
All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. The forms of men shall be as they had never been;...