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A figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to an animal, object, or abstract idea.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
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,
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —
This debt we pay to human guile;
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
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,
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 —
A boat, beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —
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,
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored my earth to joy
Have you departed, every one,
Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,
Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,
For whom Fresh pains he did Create,
