If any star shed peace, 'tis Thou Appearing when Heaven's breath and brow Come to the luxuriant skies, Whilst the landscape's odours rise, Star of love's soft interviews, Too delicious to be riven By absence from the heart. CCLXIII DATUR HORA QUIETI The sun upon the lake is low, Now all whom varied toil and care The noble dame on turret high, Upon the footpath watches now For Colin's darkening plaid. Now to their mates the wild swans row, By day they swam apart, And to the thicket wanders slow The hind beside the hart. The woodlark at his partner's side All meet whom day and care divide, Sir W. Scott CCLXIV TO THE MOON Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Among the stars that have a different birth,-- That finds no object worth its constancy? P. B. Shelley CCLXV A widow bird sate mourning for her Love The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel's sound. CCLXVI TO SLEEP P. B. Shelley A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth? CCLXVII THE SOLDIER'S DREAM Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er, And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart. 'Stay-stay with us!-rest!-thou art weary and worn!' And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay ;But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. T. Campbell CCLXVIII A DREAM OF THE UNKNOWN I dream'd that as I wander'd by the way Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white. And starry river-buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; Methought that of these visionary flowers CCLXIX THE INNER VISION Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes -If Thought and Love desert us, from that day The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews W. Wordsworth |