LUCID POEMS

Elegy Xix. - Written In Spring, 1743

Again the labouring hind inverts the soil;
Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave;
Another spring renews the soldier's toil,
And finds me vacant in the rural cave.
.....

William Shenstone

Endymion: Book I

ENDYMION.

A Poetic Romance.

.....

John Keats

Adonais

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rhapsody

Lo! here a cloud comes sailing, richly clad
In royal purple, which the parting beams
Of bounteous Phoebus edge with tints of gold
And lucid crimson. One might fancy it
.....

Matilda Betham

The Spell Is Broke, The Charm Is Flown!

The spell is broke; the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan:
Delirium is our best deceiver.
.....

George Gordon Byron

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

Endymion: Book Iv

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
.....

John Keats

Pictures From Theocritus

FROM IDYL I.

Goat-herd, how sweet above the lucid spring
The high pines wave with breezy murmuring!
.....

William Lisle Bowles

The Indian Lover. Morning Song.

O'ER flowery fields of waving maize,
The breeze of morning lightly plays;
Arise, my Zumia! let us rove,
The cool and fragrant citron grove!
.....

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

A Hidden Life

Proudly the youth, sudden with manhood crowned,
Went walking by his horses, the first time,
That morning, to the plough. No soldier gay
Feels at his side the throb of the gold hilt
.....

George Macdonald

The Pond

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
.....

Louise Gluck

Heritage

Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,
Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face.
.....

Claude Mckay

To Live

We both have our hands to give
Take mine I shall lead you afar

I have lived several times my face hasw changed
.....

Paul Eluard

Sketches In The Exhibition

What various objects strike with various force,
Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse!
Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge,
Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge!
.....

William Lisle Bowles

The Morai

FAIR OTAHEITE , fondly blest
By him who long was doom'd to brave
The fury of the Polar wave,
That fiercely mounts the frozen rock
.....

Helen Maria Williams

The Spirit Of The Forest Spring

Over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip:
Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies
In friendship-wise and fellowship:
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

Sketch

The shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish

I should have been a plumber fixing drains.
And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes
(who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies),

.....

Delmore Schwartz

Voltaire At Ferney

Almost happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed,
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
.....

W. H. Auden

Sunrise

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,
.....

Sidney Lanier

Gettysburg: A Battle Ode

I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
.....

George Parsons Lathrop

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
.....

T. S. Eliot

The Waster's Presentiment

I shall be spun. There is a voice within
Which tells me plainly I am all undone;
For though I toil not, neither do I spin,
I shall be spun.
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

Holy Baptism

Where is it mothers learn their love?-
In every Church a fountain springs
O'er which th' Eternal Dove
Hovers out softest wings.
.....

John Keble

The Epiphany

And lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before
them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was.
When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great
joy. St. Matthew ii. 9, 10.
.....

John Keble

Ancora

Good God! They say you are risqué,
O canzonetti!
We who went out into the four A. M. of the world
Composing our albas,
.....

Ezra Pound

Tiresias

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

When Lilacs Last In The Door-yard Bloom'd

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd--and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

.....

Walt Whitman

Report On Tait's Lecture On Force

Ye British Asses, who expect to hear
Ever some new thing,
Iâ??ve nothing new to tell, but what, I fear,
May be a true thing.
.....

James Clerk Maxwell

Lamia

Part 1

Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
.....

John Keats

To Stang

May Seventeenth in Eidsvold's church united,
To hallow after fifty years the day
When they who there our charter free indited,
Together for our land were met to pray,-
.....

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

In Laleham Churchyard

'Twas at this season, year by year,
The singer who lies songless here
Was wont to woo a less austere,
Less deep repose,
.....

William Watson

Epigrams

'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
Second in order of felicity
I hold it, to have walk'd with such a soul.
.....

William Watson

Orpheus

ORPHEUS.
LAUGHTER and dance, and sounds of harp and lyre,
Piping of flutes, singing of festal songs,
Ribbons of flame from flaunting torches, dulled
.....

Emma Lazarus

The Thrush In February

I know him, February's thrush,
And loud at eve he valentines
On sprays that paw the naked bush
Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.
.....

George Meredith

Daphne

Musing on the fate of Daphne,
Many feelings urged my breast,
For the God so keen desiring,
And the Nymph so deep distrest.
.....

George Meredith

The Four Seasons : Spring

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
.....

James Thomson

Bluebird

A wistful note from out the sky,
'Pure, pure, pure,' in plaintive tone,
As if the wand'rer were alone,
And hardly knew to sing or cry.
.....

John Burroughs

Witchery

She walks the woods, when evening falls,
With spirits of the winds and leaves;
And to her side the soul she calls
Of every flower she perceives.
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

The Visionary Boy

Oh! lend that lute, sweet Archimage, to me!
Enough of care and heaviness
The weary lids of life depress,
And doubly blest that gentle heart shall be,
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Lines Inscribed To P. De Loutherbourg, Esq. R. A.

WHERE on the bosom of the foamy RHINE,
In curling waves the rapid waters shine;
Where tow'ring cliffs in awful grandeur rise,
And midst the blue expanse embrace the skies;
.....

Mary Darby Robinson

A Different Meaning

It is truly as lucid as lucid can be;
It is plain as the nose on your face
Though the tactics may be a disgrace, don't you see,
The tactician is not a disgrace.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

After Gaetan Picon

All seeing is joy
when it is simply seeing.
It is from the mind
that the trouble comes.
.....

Eric Torgersen

St Michael's Mount - Inscribed To The Right Honourable Lord Somers.

While summer airs scarce breathe along the tide,
Oft pausing, up the mountain's craggy side
We climb, how beautiful, how still, how clear,
The scenes that stretch around! The rocks that rear
.....

William Lisle Bowles

The Spirit Of Discovery By Sea: Book The Fourth.

Stand on the gleaming Pharos,[1] and aloud
Shout, Commerce, to the kingdoms of the earth;
Shout, for thy golden portals are set wide,
And all thy streamers o'er the surge, aloft,
.....

William Lisle Bowles

England And Spain

Too long have Tyranny and Power combined,
To sway, with iron sceptre, o'er mankind;
Long has Oppression worn th' imperial robe,
And Rapine's sword has wasted half the globe!
.....

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

St. Michael's Mount

INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD SOMERS.

While summer airs scarce breathe along the tide,
Oft pausing, up the mountain's craggy side
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Vision Of Columbus - Book 3

Now, twice twelve years, the children of the skies
Beheld in peace their growing empire rise;
O'er happy realms, display'd their generous care,
Diffused their arts and soothd the rage of war;
.....

Joel Barlow

Liminary

The hollow crystal of my winter dream
and silences, where thought for worship, white,
shimmer'd within the icy mirror-gleam,
vanishes down the flood of broader light.
.....

Christopher John Brennan