The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  and on thy cheek a fading rose

  fast withereth too.

  I met a lady in the meads

  full beautiful, a fairy’s child;

  her hair was long, her foot was light,

  and her eyes were wild.

  I set her on my pacing steed,

  and nothing else saw all day long;

  for sideways would she lean, and sing

  a fairy’s song.

  I made a garland for her head,

  and bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

  she look’d at me as she did love,

  and made sweet moan.

  She found me roots of relish sweet,

  and honey wild, and manna dew;

  and sure in language strange she said,

  I love thee true.

  She took me to her elfin grot,

  and there she gaz’d and sighed deep,

  and there I shut her wild sad eyes—

  so kiss’d to sleep.

  And there we slumber’d on the moss,

  and there I dream’d, ah woe betide,

  the latest dream I ever dream’d

  on the cold hill side.

  I saw pale kings, and princes too,

  pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

  who cry’d—“La belle Dame sans merci

  hath thee in thrall!”

  I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam

  with horrid warning gaped wide,

  and I awoke, and found me here

  on the cold hill side.

  And this is why I sojourn here

  alone and palely loitering,

  though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

  and no birds sing.

  O Blush Not So1

  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 want, and a blush for shan’t,

  and a blush for having done it;

  there’s a blush for thought, and a blush for nought,

  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 loosened 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 aye, and a sigh for nay,

  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!

  This living hand, now warm and capable1

  This living hand, now warm and capable

  of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

  and in the icy silence of the tomb,

  so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

  that thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

  so in my veins red life might stream again,

  and thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

  I hold it towards you.

  Ode on a Grecian Urn1

  Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

  thou foster child of silence and slow time,

  sylvan historian, who canst thus express

  a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

  what leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

  of deities or mortals, or of both,

  in Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

  What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

  What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

  What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

  Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

  are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

  not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

  pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

  Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

  bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

  though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

  she cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

  forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

  Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

  your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

  and, happy melodist, unwearied,

  forever piping songs forever new;

  more happy love! more happy, happy love!

  Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,

  forever panting, and forever young;

  all breathing human passion far above,

  that leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

  a burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

  Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

  lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

  and all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?

  What little town by river or sea shore,

  or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

  is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

  And, little town, thy streets for evermore

  will silent be; and not a soul to tell

  why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

  O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

  of marble men and maidens overwrought,

  with forest branches and the trodden weed;

  thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

  as doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!

  When old age shall this generation waste,

  thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

  than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all

  ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  Thomas Hood (1799 – 1845)

  The Poet’s Fate1

  What is a modern Poet’s fate?

  To write his thoughts upon a slate;

  the Critic spits on what is done,

  gives it a wipe—and all is gone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

  Days2

  Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

  muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

  and marching single in an endless file,

  bring diadems and faggots in their hands.

  To each they offer gifts after his will,

  bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

  I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

  forgot my morning wishes, hastily

  took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

  turned and departed silent. I, too late,

  under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

  Hamatreya3

  Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,

  possessed the land which rendered to their toil

  hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.

  Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,

  saying, “‘Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.

  How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!

  How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!

  I fancy these pure waters and the flags

  know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;

  and, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”

  Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:

  and strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

  earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

  Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;

  who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet

  clear of the grave.

  They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,

  and sighed for all that
bounded their domain;

  “This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;

  we must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,

  and misty lowland, where to go for peat.

  The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.

  ‘Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,

  to find the sitfast acres where you left them.”

  Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds

  him to his land, a lump of mould the more.

  Hear what the Earth says:—

  Earth-Song

  “Mine and yours;

  mine, not yours, Earth endures;

  stars abide—

  shine down in the old sea;

  old are the shores;

  but where are old men?

  I who have seen much,

  such have I never seen.

  The lawyer’s deed

  ran sure,

  in tail,

  to them, and to their heirs

  who shall succeed,

  without fail,

  forevermore.

  Here is the land,

  shaggy with wood,

  with its old valley,

  mound and flood.

  But the heritors?—

  fled like the flood’s foam.

  The lawyer, and the laws,

  and the kingdom,

  clean swept herefrom.

  They called me theirs,

  who so controlled me;

  yet every one

  wished to stay, and is gone,

  how am I theirs,

  if they cannot hold me,

  but I hold them?”

  When I heard the Earth-song,

  I was no longer brave;

  my avarice cooled

  like lust in the chill of the grave.

  The Rhodora1

  On being asked, Whence is the flower?

  In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

  I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

  spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

  to please the desert and the sluggish brook.

  The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

  made the black water with their beauty gay;

  here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

  and court the flower that cheapens his array.

  Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

  this charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

  tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

  then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

  why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

  I never thought to ask, I never knew:

  but, in my simple ignorance, suppose

  the self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

  The Snow-Storm1

  Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

  arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

  seems nowhere to alight: the whitëd air

  hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,

  and veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.

  The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet

  delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

  around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

  in a tumultuous privacy of storm.

  Come see the north wind’s masonry.

  Out of an unseen quarry evermore

  furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

  curves his white bastions with projected roof

  round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

  Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

  so fanciful, so savage, naught cares he

  for number or proportion. Mockingly,

  on coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

  a swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

  fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

  maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate

  a tapering turret overtops the work.

  And when his hours are numbered, and the world

  is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

  leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

  to mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

  built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

  the frolic architecture of the snow.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

  Sonnets from the Portuguese – I1

  I thought once how Theocritus had sung

  of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,

  who each one in a gracious hand appears

  to bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

  and, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

  I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

  the sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

  those of my own life, who by turns had flung

  a shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,

  so weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

  behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

  and a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

  “Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said.

  but, there,

  the silver answer rang,—“Not Death, but Love.”

  Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV1

  If thou must love me, let it be for nought

  except for love’s sake only. Do not say

  “I love her for her smile—her look—her way

  of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought

  that falls in well with mine, and certes brought

  a sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—

  for these things in themselves, Beloved, may

  be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,

  may be unwrought so. Neither love me for

  thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—

  a creature might forget to weep, who bore

  thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

  But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

  thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

  Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX2

  Belovëd, my Belovëd, when I think

  that thou wast in the world a year ago,

  what time I sat alone here in the snow

  and saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

  no moment at thy voice, but, link by link,

  went counting all my chains as if that so

  they never could fall off at any blow

  struck by thy possible hand,—why, thus I drink

  of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,

  never to feel thee thrill the day or night

  with personal act or speech,—nor ever cull

  some prescience of thee with the blossoms white

  thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,

  who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

  Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII1

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  for the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of everyday’s

  most Quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  with my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

  smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

  A Nameless Grave2

  “A soldier of the Union mustered out,”

  is the inscription on an unknown grave<
br />
  at Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,

  nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout

  shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout

  of battle, when the loud artillery drave

  its iron wedges through the ranks of brave

  and doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.

  Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea

  in thy forgotten grave! With secret shame

  I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,

  when I remember thou hast given for me

  all that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,

  and I can give thee nothing in return.

  Jugurtha1

  How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

  Cried the African monarch, the splendid,

  as down to his death in the hollow

  dark dungeons of Rome he descended,

  uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;

  how cold are thy baths, Apollo!

  How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

  Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,

  as the vision, that lured him to follow,

  with the mist and the darkness blended,

  and the dream of his life was ended;

  how cold are thy baths, Apollo!

  Killed at the Ford2

  He is dead, the beautiful youth,

  the heart of honor, the tongue of truth,

  he, the life and light of us all,

  whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call,

  whom all eyes followed with one consent,

  the cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,

  hushed all murmurs of discontent.

  Only last night, as we rode along,

  down in the dark of the mountain gap,

  to visit the picket-guard at the ford,

  little dreaming of any mishap,

  he was humming the words of some old song:

  “Two red roses he had on his cap

  and another he bore at the point of his sword.”

  Sudden and swift a whistling ball

  came out of a wood, and the voice was still;

  something I heard in the darkness fall,

  and for a moment my blood grew chill;

  I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks