romantics

  The Human Seasons Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;      There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear      Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously      Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high      Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings      He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things      Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

  “ Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—           Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night  And watching, with eternal lids apart,           Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,  The moving waters at their priestlike task           Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,  Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask           Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—  No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,           Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,  To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,           Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,  Still, still to hear her tender-taken breat...

Lines on the Mermaid Tavern Souls of Poets dead and gone,  What Elysium have ye known,  Happy field or mossy cavern,  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?  Have ye tippled drink more fine  Than mine host's Canary wine?  Or are fruits of Paradise  Sweeter than those dainty pies  Of venison? O generous food!  Drest as though bold Robin Hood  Would, with his maid Marian,  Sup and bowse from horn and can.  I have heard that on a day  Mine host's sign-board flew away,  Nobody knew whither, till  An astrologer's old quill  To a sheepskin gave the story,  Said he saw you in your glory,  Underneath a new old sign  Sipping beverage divine,  And pledging with contented smack  The Mermaid in the Zodiac.  Souls of Poets dead and gone,  What Elysium have ye known,  Happy field or mossy cavern,  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? 

  To Autumn (1819/20) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;       To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease,       For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,    Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy...

  Modern Love (1848) And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle; A thing of soft misnomers, so divine That silly youth doth think to make itself Divine by loving, and so goes on Yawning and doting a whole summer long, Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara, And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots; Then Cleopatra lives at number seven, And Antony resides in Brunswick Square. Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world, If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts, It is no reason why such agonies Should be more common than the growth of weeds. Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.  

Ode on Melancholy  No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globèd peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while ...