His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness – to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
Sonnet to Homer
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind; – but then the veil was rent,
For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green,
There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
Sonnet to a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall
Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,
Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web,
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.
And yet I never look on midnight sky,
But I behold thine eyes’ well memory’d light;
I cannot look upon the rose’s dye,
But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight.
I cannot look on any building flower,
But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips
And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour
Its sweets in the wrong sense: – Thou dost eclipse
Every delight with sweet remembering,
And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.
Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of Burns
The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold – strange – as in a dream,
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv’d, paly summer is but won
From winter’s ague, for one hour’s gleam;
Though sapphire-warm, their stars do never beam:
All is cold beauty; pain is never done:
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it! Bums! with honour due
I oft have honour’d thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.
Sonnet on Leigh Hunt’s Poem ‘The Story of Rimini’
Who loves to peer up at the morning sun,
With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek.
Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek
For meadows where the little rivers run;
Who loves to linger with that brightest one
Of Heaven – Hesperus – let him lowly speak
These numbers to the night, and starlight meek.
Or moon, if that her hunting be begun.
He who knows these delights, and too is prone
To moralise upon a smile or tear,
Will find at once a region of his own,
A bower for his spirit, and will steer
To alleys where the fir tree drops its cone,
Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear.
Sonnet: A Dream, after Reading Dante’s Episode of Paulo and Francesco
As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away -
Not to pure Ida’ with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where ‘mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.
Sonnet to Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom – pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the ‘Amen,’ ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, -
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my Soul.
Sonnet Written in Answer to a Sonnet Ending thus:
Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell!
Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, – the domain
Of Cynthia, – the wide palace of the sun, -
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, -
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! Tis the life of waters: – Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, -
Forget-me-not, – the bluebell, – and,