There thou or joinest the immortal quire
In melodies that even heaven fair Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire
Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air
On holy message sent - What pleasures higher?
Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?
Sonnet on the Sea
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov’d for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vex’d and tir’d,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; Oh ye! whose ears are dinn’d with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody -
Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quir’d!
Sonnet to Fanny
I cry your mercy - pity - love! - aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask’d, and being seen - without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, - all - all - be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, - those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -
Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes, - the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!
Sonnet to Ailsa Rock
Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls’ screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is’t since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid.
Thou answer’st not; for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities - The last in air, the former in the deep;
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies -
Drown’d wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant size.
Sonnet on a Picture of Leander
Come hither all sweet maidens soberly,
Down-looking aye, and with a chasten’d light,
Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,
Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit’s night, -
Sinking bewilder’d ‘mid the dreary sea:
’Tis young Leander toiling to his death;
Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:
He’s gone: up bubbles all his amorous breath!
Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard
Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies,
For more adornment, a full thousand years;
She took their cream of beauty’s fairest dyes,
And shap’d and tinted her above all Peers’
Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,
And underneath their shadow fill’d her eyes
With such a richness that the cloudy Kings
Of high Olympus utter’d slavish sighs.
When from the heavens I saw her first descend,
My heart took fire, and only burning pains, They were my pleasures - they my life’s sad end;
Love pour’d her beauty into my warm veins …
Lamia Part I
Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem,
Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns,
The ever-smitten Hermes empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
On this side of Jove’s clouds, to escape the sight Of his great summoner, and made retreat
Into a forest on the shores of Crete.
For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured
Pearls, while on land they wither’d and adored.
Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,
And in those meads where sometime she might haunt,
Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,