Emotions and Feelings

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom; Lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

Glimmering stars of the Great Bear, I never thought I’d be back to see you Shining down on my father’s garden, Nor talk to you ever again from the windows Of this house where I spent my childhood And saw the last of my happiness vanish.

I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen upon me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be.

I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen upon me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be.

Child, you are like a flower, So sweet and pure and fair. I look at you, and sadness Touches me with a prayer.

I will not mourn, although my heart is torn, Oh, love forever lost! I will not mourn.

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing!

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal.

For to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

Ever let the fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.

Ever let the fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.