Vain is the glory of the sky, The beauty vain of field and grove, Unless, while with admiring eye We gaze, we also learn to love. -Glad Sight. Thou wilt salute old memories as they throng Through fresh green fields, and budding groves among, Of sunshine wilt thou think, and flowers and song, For who what is shall measure by what seems To be, or not to be, Or tax high Heaven with prodigality? -The Unremitting Voice. Action is transitory,—a step, a blow— The child is father of the man. -The Borderers. -My Heart Leaps Up. Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now. A Briton, even in love, should be A subject, not a slave! -To a Butterfly. --Ere with Cold Beads of Midnight Dew. True beauty dwells in deep retreats, Whose veil is unremoved Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved. -To Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive. -Yes, Thou Art Fair. Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant -Why Art Thou Silent. Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant Something between a hindrance and a help. But he is oft the wisest man -Michael. Who is not wise at all. -The Oak and the Broom. A youth to whom was given So much of earth, so much of heaven. That least of all can aught—that ever owned -Old Cumberland Beggar. Long have I loved what I behold, The night that calms, the day that cheers; Suffices me-her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears. -Peter Bell. Such delight I found To note in shrub and tree, in stone and flower Of their own beauty, imaged in the heart. -To Johanna. Gone from this world of earth, air, sea, and sky, Intensely studied with a painter's eye, A poet's heart. The primal flight -Elegiac Musings. Of the poetic ecstasy Into the land of mystery. -Oft Have 1 Caught. O Nightingale! Who ever heard thy song Where wood or stream by thee was never greeted. -By the Side of Rydal Mere. What are helps of time and place, When Wisdom stands in need of Nature's grace; -Soft as a Cloud. Plain living and high thinking are no more, -Sonnet. London, 1802. Tears to human suffering are due: And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown -Laodamia. Soft is the music that would charm forever, -Sonnet. How does the meadow-flower in its bloom unfold? -Sonnet. The best of what we do and are, Just God, forgive! -Thoughts on the Banks of Nith. Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade The feather whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an angel's wing. -Ecclesiastical Sonnets. I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning. -Simon Lee. Yet sometimes when the secret cup Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up, He felt with spirit so profound. Whence can comfort spring -Matthew. When prayer is of no avail? -Force of Prayer. But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things. -To Sir George Beaumont. Those recollected hours that have the charm And sweet sensations that throw back our life, A visible scene, on which the sun is shining. -Book I. Tell,-how Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name To people the steep rocks and river banks, The fairest of all rivers, loved -Book I. Nursed in his mother's arms, who sinks to sleep Of nature that connect him with the world.. Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him 1 |