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A Lament.

SWIFTER far than summer's flight,
Swifter far than youth's delight,
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone;

As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, lone.

The swallow Summer comes again,
The owlet Night resumes her reign,
But the wild swan Youth is fain

To fly with thee, false as thou.

My heart each day desires the morrow,
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow,

Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.

Lilies for a bridal bed,

Roses for a matron's head,
Violets for a maiden dead,

Pansies let my flowers be;
On the living grave I bear,
Scatter them without a tear,
Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear for me.

SHELLEY.

The Mind superior to the Body's Infirmities.

WHEN we for age could neither read nor write,

The subject made us able to endite:

The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt,
The body stooping, does herself erect.
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her that, unbodied, can her Maker praise.

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er:
So calm are we when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

WALLER.

Sonnet,

TO THE RIVER OTTER.

DEAR native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various fated years have past,

What happy, and what mournful hours since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows gray,
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled

Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs:

Ah! could I be once more a careless child!

COLERIDGE.

On Shakspeare.

1630.

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WHAT needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a starry-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What needst thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to the shame of slow endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;

And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

MILTON.

To T. V. Y.,

SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS.

SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,

My little, patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee
Smooth's off the day's annoy.

I sit me down, and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillowed meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart, in pain and weakness,
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand
That wipes thy quiet tears,

These, these are things that may demand
Dread memories for years!

Sorrows I've had, severe ones,
I will not think of now;
And calmly 'midst my dear ones
Have wasted with dry brow;

But when thy fingers press
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,-
The tears are in their bed.

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