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“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Fair tree! for thy delightful shade
’Tis just that some return be made;
Sure some return is due from me
Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,
Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,
Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
The lords of life, the lords of life, —
I saw them pass,
In their own guise,
When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
O quam te memorem virgo...
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —
This debt we pay to human guile;
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,
’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ’tis light?
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
A startled stag, the blue-grey Night,
Leaps down beyond black pines.
Behind — a length of yellow light —
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes —
Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name:
For when that fatal knot is tied,
A boat, beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —
The sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
Lord of my heart’s elation,
Spirit of things unseen,
Be thou my aspiration
Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night
And she made all of light,
For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands
Escape me?
Never —
Beloved!
What is he buzzing in my ears?
“Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
Shall earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored my earth to joy
Have you departed, every one,
