THOMAS MOORE 1808

	Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers,
	Where pleasure lies carelessly smiling at fame;
	He was born for much more, and in happier hours,
	His soul might have burn’d with a holier flame.
	The string that now languishes loose on the lyre,
	Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior’s dart;
	And the lip which now breathes but the song of desire,
	Might have pour’d the full tide of the patriot’s heart!

	But alas! for his country – her pride is gone by,
	And that spirit is broken which never would bend;
	O’er the ruin her children in secret must sigh,
	For ’tis treason to love her, and death to defend.
	Unpriz’d are her sons, till they’ve learn’d to betray;
	Undistinguish’d they live, if they shame not their sires;
	And the torch that would light them through dignity’s way,
	Must be caught from the pile where their country expires.

	Then blame not the bard, if in pleasure’s soft dream
	He should try to forget what he never can heal;
	Oh! give but a hope – let a vista but gleam
	Through the gloom of his country, and mark how he’ll feel!
	That instant, his heart at her shrine would lay down
	Every passion it nurs’d, every bliss it ador’d;
	While the myrtle, now idly entwin’d with his crown,
	Like the wreath of Harmodius, should cover his sword.

	But though glory be gone, and though hope fade away,
	Thy name, lov’d Erin! shall live in his songs:
	Not even in the hour when his heart is most gay,
	Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs.
	The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains,
	The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o’er the deep,
	Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,
	Shall pause at the song of their captive and weep!

1810 GEORGE CRABBE from The Borough

	from Prisons [The Condemned Man]
	Yes! e’en in Sleep th’impressions all remain,
	He hears the Sentence and he feels the Chain;
	He sees the Judge and Jury, when he shakes,
	And loudly cries, ‘Not guilty,’ and awakes:
	Then chilling Tremblings o’er his Body creep,
	Till worn-out Nature is compell’d to sleep.

	Now comes the Dream again: it shows each Scene,
	With each small Circumstance that comes between –
	The Call to Suffering and the very Deed –
	There Crowds go with him, follow and precede;
	Some heartless shout, some pity, all condemn,
	While he in fancied Envy looks at them:
	He seems the Place for that sad Act to see,
	And dreams the very Thirst which then will be:
	A Priest attends – it seems the one he knew
	In his best days, beneath whose care he grew.

	At this his Terrors take a sudden flight,
	He sees his native Village with delight;
	The House, the Chamber, where he once array’d
	His youthful Person; where he knelt and pray’d:
	Then too the Comforts he enjoy’d at home,
	The Days of Joy; the Joys themselves are come; –
	The Hours of Innocence; – the timid Look
	Of his lov’d Maid, when first her hand he took
	And told his hope; her trembling Joy appears, –
	Her forc’d Reserve and his retreating Fears.

	All now is present; – ’tis a moment’s gleam
	Of former Sunshine – stay, delightful Dream!
	Let him within his pleasant Garden walk,
	Give him her Arm, of Blessings let them talk.

	Yes! all are with him now, and all the while
	Life’s early Prospects and his Fanny’s Smile:
	Then come his Sister and his Village Friend,
	And he will now the sweetest Moments spend
	Life has to yield: – No! never will he find
	Again on Earth such Pleasure in his Mind:
	He goes through shrubby Walks these Friends among,
	Love in their Looks and Honour on the Tongue;
	Nay, there’s a Charm beyond what Nature shows,
	The Bloom is softer and more sweetly glows; –
	Pierc’d by no Crime, and urg’d by no desire
	For more than true and honest Hearts require,
	They feel the calm Delight, and thus proceed
	Through the green Lane, – then linger in the Mead, –
	Stray o’er the Heath in all its purple bloom, –
	And pluck the Blossom where the Wild-bees hum;
	Then through the broomy Bound with ease they pass,
	And press the sandy Sheep-walk’s slender Grass,
	Where dwarfish Flowers among the Gorse are spread,
	And the Lamb brouzes by the Linnet’s Bed;
	Then ’cross the bounding Brook they make their way
	O’er its rough Bridge – and there behold the Bay! –
	The Ocean smiling to the fervid Sun –
	The Waves that faintly fall and slowly run –
	The Ships at distance and the Boats at hand:
	And now they walk upon the Sea-side Sand,
	Counting the number and what kind they be,
	Ships softly sinking in the sleepy Sea:
	Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold
	The glitt’ring Waters on the Shingles roll’d:
	The timid Girls, half-dreading their design,
	Dip the small Foot in the retarded Brine,
	And search for crimson Weeds, which spreading flow,
	Or lie like Pictures on the Sand below;
	With all those bright red Pebbles, that the Sun
	Through the small Waves so softly shines upon;
	And those live lucid Jellies which the eye
	Delights to trace as they swim glitt’ring by:
	Pearl-shells and rubied Star-fish they admire,
	And will arrange above the Parlour-fire, –
	Tokens of Bliss! – ‘Oh! horrible! – a Wave
	Roars as it rises – save me, Edward! save!’
	She cries: – Alas! the Watchman on his way
	Calls and lets in – Truth, Terror, and the Day.

	Alas! for Peter not an helping Hand,
	So was he hated, could he now command;
	Alone he row’d his Boat, alone he cast
	His Nets beside, or made his Anchor fast;
	To hold a Rope or hear a Curse was none, –
	He toil’d and rail’d; he groan’d and swore alone.

	Thus by himself compell’d to live each day,
	To wait for certain hours the Tide’s delay;
	At the same times the same dull views to see,
	The bounding Marsh-bank and the blighted Tree;
	The Water only, when the Tides were high,
	When low, the Mud half-cover’d and half-dry;
	The Sun-burnt Tar that blisters on the Planks,
	And Bank-side Stakes in their uneven ranks;
	Heaps of entangled Weeds that slowly float,
	As the Tide rolls by the impeded Boat.

	When Tides were neap, and, in the sultry day,
	Through the tall bounding Mud-banks made their way,
	Which on each side rose swelling, and below
	The dark warm Flood ran silently and slow;
	There anchoring, Peter chose from Man to hide,
	There hang his Head, and view the lazy Tide
	In its hot slimy Channel slowly glide;
	Where the small Eels that left the deeper way
	For the warm Shore, within the Shallows play;
	Where gaping Muscles, left upon the Mud,
	Slope their slow passage to the fallen Flood; –
	Here dull and hopeless he’ll lie down and trace
	How sidelong Crabs had scrawl’d their crooked race;
	Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry
	Of fishing Gull or clanging Golden-eye;
	What time the Sea-birds to the Marsh would come,
	And the loud Bittern, from the Bull-rush home,
	Gave from the Salt-ditch side the bellowing Boom:
	He nurst the Feelings these dull Scenes produce,
	And lov’d to stop beside the opening Sluice;
	Where the small Stream, confin’d in narrow bound,
	Ran with a dull, unvaried, sad’ning sound;
	Where all presented to the Eye or Ear,
	Oppress’d the Soul! with Misery, Grief, and Fear.

SIR WALTER SCOTT from The Lady of the Lake

	Coronach
	He is gone on the mountain,
	He is lost to the forest,
	Like a summer-dried fountain,
	When our need was the sorest.
5	The font, reappearing,
	From the rain-drops shall borrow,
	But to us comes no cheering,
	To Duncan no morrow!
	The hand of the reaper
10	Takes the ears that are hoary,
	But the voice of the weeper
	Wails manhood in glory.
	The autumn winds rushing
	Waft the leaves that are searest,
15	But our flower was in flushing,
	When blighting was nearest.
	Fleet foot on the correi,
	Sage counsel in cumber,
	Red hand in the foray,
20	How sound is thy slumber!
	Like the dew on the mountain,
	Like the foam on the river,
	Like the bubble on the fountain,
	Thou art gone, and for ever!

1815 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON Stanzas for Music

	There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
	When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay;
	’Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
	But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

	Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness,
	Are driven o’er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess:
	The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
	The shore to which their shiver’d sail shall never stretch again.

	Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
	It cannot feel for others’ woes, it dare not dream its own;
	That heavy chill has frozen o’er the fountain of our tears,
	And tho’ the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.

	Tho’ wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
	Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;
	’Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin’d turret wreath,
	All green and wildly fresh without but worn and grey beneath.

	Oh could I feel as I have felt, – or be what I have been,
	Or weep as I could once have wept, o’er many a vanished scene:
	As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
	So midst the wither’d waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

1816 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

	In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
	A stately pleasure-dome decree:
	Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
	Through caverns measureless to man
	Down to a sunless sea.
	So twice five miles of fertile ground
	With walls and towers were girdled round:
	And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
	Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
	And here were forests ancient as the hills,
	Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

	But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
	Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
	A savage place! as holy and enchanted
	As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
	By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
	And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
	As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
	A mighty fountain momently was forced:
	Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
	Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
	Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
	And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
	It flung up momently the sacred river.
	Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
	Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
	Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
	And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
	And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
	Ancestral voices prophesying war!
	The shadow of the dome of pleasure
	Floated midway on the waves;
	Where was heard the mingled measure
	From the fountain and the caves.
	It was a miracle of rare device,
	A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

	A damsel with a dulcimer
	In a vision once I saw:
	It was an Abyssinian maid,
	And on her dulcimer she played,
	Singing of Mount Abora.
	Could I revive within me
	Her symphony and song,
	To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
	That with music loud and long,
	I would build that dome in air,
	That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
	And all who heard should see them there,
	And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
	His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
	Weave a circle round him thrice,
	And close your eyes with holy dread,
	For he on honey-dew hath fed,
	And drunk the milk of Paradise.

(written 1798)

JOHN KEATS On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

	Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
	And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
	Round many western islands have I been
	Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
	Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
	That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
	Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
	Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
	Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
	When a new planet swims into his ken;
	Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
	He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
	Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –
	Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY To Wordsworth

	Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
	That things depart which never may return:
	Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
	Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
	These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
	Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
	Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
	On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
	Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
	Above the blind and battling multitude:
	In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
	Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, –
	Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
	Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from The Rime of the 1817 Ancient Mariner

	PART IV
	‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner! The Wedding Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him.
	I fear thy skinny hand!
	And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
	As is the ribbed sea-sand.

	I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
	And thy skinny hand, so brown.’ –
	Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.
	This body dropt not down.

	Alone, alone, all, all alone,
	Alone on a wide wide sea!
	And never a saint took pity on
	My soul in agony.

	The many men, so beautiful! He despiseth the creatures of the calm.
	And they all dead did lie:
	And a thousand thousand slimy things
	Lived on; and so did I.

	I looked upon the rotting sea, And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.
	And drew my eyes away;
	I looked upon the rotting deck,
	And there the dead men lay.

	I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
	But or ever a prayer had gusht,
	A wicked whisper came, and made
	My heart as dry as dust.

	I closed my lids, and kept them close,
	And the balls like pulses beat;
	For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
	Lay like a load on my weary eye,
	And the dead were at my feet.

	The cold sweat melted from their limbs, But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.
	Nor rot nor reek did they:
	The look with which they looked on me
	Had never passed away.

	An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
	A spirit from on high;
	But oh! more horrible than that
	Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
	Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
	And yet I could not die.

	Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
	Like April hoar-frost spread;
	But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
	The charméd water burnt alway
	A still and awful red.

	Beyond the shadow of the ship, By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm.
	I watched the water-snakes:
	They moved in tracks of shining white,
	And when they reared, the elfish light
	Fell off in hoary flakes.

	Within the shadow of the ship
	I watched their rich attire:
	Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
	They coiled and swam; and every track
	Was a flash of golden fire.

	O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty and their happiness.
	Their beauty might declare:
	A spring of love gushed from my heart,
	And I blessed them unaware: He blesseth them in his heart.
	Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
	And I blessed them unaware.

	The selfsame moment I could pray; The spell begins to break.
	And from my neck so free
	The Albatross fell off, and sank
	Like lead into the sea.

JOHN KEATS

	After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains
	For a long dreary season, comes a day
	Born of the gentle South, and clears away,
	From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
	The anxious month, relieving from its pains,
	Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May,
	The eyelids with the passing coolness play,
	Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.
	The calmest thoughts come round us – as of leaves
	Budding, – fruit ripening in stillness, – autumn suns
	Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves, –
	Sweet Sappho’s cheek, – a sleeping infant’s breath, –
	The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs, –
	A woodland rivulet, – a Poet’s death.

JOHN KEATS from Endymion 1818

	But there are
	Richer entanglements, enthralments far
	More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
	To the chief intensity: the crown of these
	Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
	Upon the forehead of humanity.
	All its more ponderous and bulky worth
	Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
	A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,
	There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
	Of light, and that is love: its influence,
	Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,
	At which we start and fret; till in the end,
	Melting into its radiance, we blend,
	Mingle, and so become a part of it –
	Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
	So wingedly. When we combine therewith,
	Life’s self is nourished by its proper pith,
	And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.
	Ay, so delicious is the unsating food,
	That men, who might have towered in the van
	Of all the congregated world, to fan
	And winnow from the coming step of time
	All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
	Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
	Have been content to let occasion die,
	Whilst they did sleep in love’s elysium.
	And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,
	Than speak against this ardent listlessness:
	For I have ever thought that it might bless
	The world with benefits unknowingly,
	As does the nightingale, up-perchèd high,
	And cloistered among cool and bunched leaves –
	She sings but to her love, nor e’er conceives
	How tip-toe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.
	Just so may love, although ’tis understood
	The mere commingling of passionate breath,
	Produce more than our searching witnesseth –
	What I know not: but who, of men, can tell
	That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
	To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
	The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
	The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
	The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
	Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
	If human souls did never kiss and greet?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Ozymandias

	I met a traveller from an antique land
	Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
	Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
	Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
	And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
	Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
	Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
	The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
	And on the pedestal these word appear:
	“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
	Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
	Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
	Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
	The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

SIR WALTER SCOTT from The Heart of Mid-Lothian

	[Madge Wildfire sings:]
	‘Proud Maisie is in the wood,
	Walking so early;
	Sweet Robin sits on the bush,
	Singing so rarely.

	“ ‘Tell me, thou bonny bird,
	When shall I marry me?” –
	“When six braw gentlemen
	Kirkward shall carry ye.”

* * *

	“ ‘Who makes the bridal bed,
	Birdie, say truly?”
	“The gray-headed sexton
	That delves the grave duly.”

* * *

	‘The glow-worm o’er grave and stone
	Shall light thee steady;
	The owl from the steeple sing,
	“Welcome, proud lady.” ’

1819 SIR WALTER SCOTT from The Bride of Lammermoor

	[Lucy Ashton’s song]
	‘Look not thou on Beauty’s charming, –
	Sit thou still when Kings are arming, –
	Taste not when the wine-cup glistens, –
	Speak not when the people listens, –
	Stop thine ear against the singer, –
	From the red gold keep thy finger, –
	Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, –
	Easy live and quiet die.’

GEORGE CRABBE from Tales of the Hall

	from Delay has Danger
	Three weeks had past, and Richard rambles now
	Far as the dinners of the day allow;
	He rode to Farley Grange and Finley Mere,
	That house so ancient, and that lake so clear:
	He rode to Ripley through that river gay,
	Where in the shallow stream the loaches play,
	And stony fragments stay the winding stream,
	And gilded pebbles at the bottom gleam,
	Giving their yellow surface to the sun,
	And making proud the waters as they run:
	It is a lovely place, and at the side
	Rises a mountain-rock in rugged pride;
	And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms
	Of creatures in old worlds, of nameless worms,
	Whose generations lived and died ere man,
	A worm of other class, to crawl began.

	There is a town call’d Silford, where his steed
	Our traveller rested – He the while would feed
	His mind by walking to and fro, to meet,
	He knew not what adventure, in the street:
	A stranger there, but yet a window-view
	Gave him a face that he conceived he knew;
	He saw a tall, fair, lovely lady, dress’d
	As one whom taste and wealth had jointly bless’d;
	He gazed, but soon a footman at the door
	Thundering, alarm’d her, who was seen no more.

	‘This was the lady whom her lover bound
	In solemn contract, and then proved unsound:
	Of this affair I have a clouded view,
	And should be glad to have it clear’d by you.’
	So Richard spake, and instant George replied,
	‘I had the story from the injured side,
	But when resentment and regret were gone,
	And pity (shaded by contempt) came on.

	‘Frail was the hero of my tale, but still
	Was rather drawn by accident than will;
	Some without meaning into guilt advance,
	From want of guard, from vanity, from chance;
	Man’s weakness flies his more immediate pain,
	A little respite from his fears to gain;
	And takes the part that he would gladly fly,
	If he had strength and courage to deny.

	‘But now my tale, and let the moral say,
	When hope can sleep, there’s Danger in delay.
	Not that for rashness, Richard, I would plead,
	For unadvised alliance: No, indeed:
	Think ere the contract – but, contracted, stand
	No more debating, take the ready hand:
	When hearts are willing, and when fears subside,
	Trust not to time, but let the knot be tied;
	For when a lover has no more to do,
	He thinks in leisure, what shall I pursue?
	And then who knows what objects come in view?
	For when, assured, the man has nought to keep
	His wishes warm and active, then they sleep:

	Hopes die with fears; and then a man must lose
	All the gay visions, and delicious views,
	Once his mind’s wealth! He travels at his ease,
	Nor horrors now nor fairy-beauty sees;
	When the kind goddess gives the wish’d assent,
	No mortal business should the deed prevent;
	But the blest youth should legal sanction seek
	Ere yet th’ assenting blush has fled the cheek.

	‘And – hear me, Richard, – man has reptile-pride
	That often rises when his fears subside;
	When, like a trader feeling rich, he now
	Neglects his former smile, his humble bow,
	And, conscious of his hoarded wealth, assumes
	New airs, nor thinks how odious he becomes.
	There is a wandering, wavering train of thought
	That something seeks where nothing should be sought,
	And will a self-delighted spirit move
	To dare the danger of pernicious love.’

WILLIAM BLAKE To the Accuser Who is the God of This World

	Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce
	And dost not know the Garment from the Man
	Every Harlot was a Virgin once
	Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan

	Tho thou art Worshipd by the Names Divine
	Of Jesus & Jehovah: thou art still
	The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
	The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill