Give me women, wine, and snuff Until I cry out "hold, enough!" You may do so sans objection Till the day of resurrection: For, bless my beard, they aye shall be My beloved Trinity....Learn More

Happy is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent: Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet...Learn More

Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home: At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her: Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. O sweet Fancy! let her loose; Summer's joys are spoilt by use, And the enjoying of...Learn More

Fill for me a brimming bowl And in it let me drown my soul: But put therein some drug, designed To Banish Women from my mind: For I want not the stream inspiring That fills the mind with--fond desiring, But I want as deep a draught As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd; From my despairing heart to charm The Image of the fairest form That e'er my...Learn More

In drear-nighted December Too happy, happy tree Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime In drear-nighted December Too happy, happy brook Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting They...Learn More

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows...Learn More

To-night I'll have my friar -- let me think About my room, -- I'll have it in the pink; It should be rich and sombre, and the moon, Just in its mid-life in the midst of June, Should look thro' four large windows and display Clear, but for gold-fish vases in the way, Their glassy diamonding on Turkish floor; The tapers keep aside, an hour and...Learn More

What is more gentle than a wind in summer? What is more soothing than the pretty hummer That stays one moment in an open flower, And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower? What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing In a green island, far from all men’s knowing? More healthful than the leafiness of dales? More secret than a nest of...Learn More