I'm glad I am alive, to see and feel The full deliciousness of this bright day, That's like a heart with nothing to conceal; The young leaves scarcely trembling; the blue-grey Rimming the cloudless ether far away; Brairds, hedges, shadows; mountains that reveal Soft sapphire; this great floor of polished steel Spread out amidst the landmarks of the...Learn More

That which he did not feel, he would not sing; What most he felt, religion it was to hide In a dumb darkling grotto, where the spring Of tremulous tears, arising unespied, Became a holy well that durst not glide Into the day with moil or murmuring; Whereto, as if to some unlawful thing, He sto]e, musing or praying at its side. But in the sun he...Learn More

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass'd O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods Than any joy indulgent summer dealt. Dear friends,...Learn More

O English mother, in the ruddy glow Hugging your baby closer when outside You see the silent, soft, and cruel snow Falling again, and think what ills betide Unshelter'd creatures,--your sad thoughts may go Where War and Winter now, two spectre-wolves, Hunt in the freezing vapour that involves Those Asian peaks of ice and gulfs below. Does this...Learn More

In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, And all along the down a fringe one sees Of ducal woods. That 'dim discovered spire' Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire Touch his sad lips; thatched Felpham roofs are these, Where happy Blake found heaven...Learn More

Here the white-ray'd anemone is born, Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup; And primrose in its purfled green swathed up, Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn, Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn. Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn, Whose partner cheers her little brooding...Learn More

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam, I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay Most idly floating in the noontide beam. Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway Of ocean's giant pulsing, and the Dream, Buoyed like the young moon on a level stream Of greenish vapour at decline of day, Swam airily, watching...Learn More

The vast and solemn company of clouds Around the Sun's death, lit, incarnadined, Cool into ashy wan; as Night enshrouds The level pasture, creeping up behind Through voiceless vales, o'er lawn and purpled hill And hazéd mead, her mystery to fulfil. Cows low from far-off farms; the loitering wind Sighs in the hedge, you hear it if you will,-- Tho'...Learn More