1820. Whose lip mature is ever new? At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh Quickly break her prison-string, And such joys as these she 'll bring.- Pleasure never is at home. John Keats 90 TO A WATERFOWL WHITHER, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye 4 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 8 12 16 20 And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.. Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 24 Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, 1818. 28 32 William Cullen Bryant. AUTUMN I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn Where are the songs of Summer?-With the sun, Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, 8 Till shade and silence waken up as one, Undazzled at noon-day, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes., 17 Where are the blooms of Summer?-In the west, Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs To a most gloomy breast. Where is the pride of Summer,-the green prime, The many, many leaves all twinkling?-Three The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard, The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have wing'd across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells 30 Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Alone, alone, Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded If only for the rose that died, whose doom 1823. 47 Thomas Hood. |