A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, – I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; ’tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds – the whisp’ring of the leaves —
The voice of waters – the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, – and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
Apollo and the Graces
Written to the Tune of the Air in ‘Don Giovanni’
APOLLO Which of the fairest three
Today will ride with me?
My steeds are all pawing at the threshold of the morn:
Which of the fairest three
Today will ride with me
Across the gold Autumn’s whole Kingdom of corn?
THE GRACES all answer I will, I – I – I -
O O young Apollo let me fly
Along with thee,
I I will – I, I, I,
The many wonders see
I – I – I – I – And thy lyre shall never have a slackened string
I, I, I, I,
Thro the golden day will sing.
Daisy’s Song
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silver-proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.
And O the spring – the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch’d in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.
I look where no one dares,
And I stare where no one stares,
And when the night is nigh,
Lambs bleat my lullaby.
Sharing Eve’s Apple
O blush not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.
There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,
And a blush for having done it:
There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught,
And a blush for just begun it.
O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;
By these loosen’d lips you have tasted the pips
And fought in an amorous nipping.
Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
For it only will last our youth out,
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
We have not one sweet tooth out.
There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can’t bear it!
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O cut the sweet apple and share it!
Epistles
“Among the rest a shepheard (though but young
Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill.”
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
The Poet – A Fragment
Where’s the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him!
’Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan,
Or any other wondrous thing
A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato;
’Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion’s roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger’s yell
Comes articulate and presseth
On his ear like mother tongue.
Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!
Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!
Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale’s,
Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;
Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,
Not longer than the mayfly’s small fan-horns;
There may not be one dimple on her hand;
And freckles many; ah! a careless nurse,
In haste to teach the little thing to walk,
May have crumpt2 up a pair of Dian’s legs,
And warpt the ivory of a Juno’s neck.
Meg Merrilies
Old Meg she was a gipsy,
And liv’d upon the moors:
Her