Emotions and Feelings

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

“Friendship is Love without his wings!”

And joyless, if not shared with him!

What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.

Oh! ever thus, from childhood’s hour, I’ve seen my fondest hope decay; I never loved a tree or flower, But ’twas the first to fade away. I never nurs’d a dear gazelle To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die.

And folly’s all they’ve taught me.

But there’s nothing half so sweet in life As love’s young dream.

Go where glory waits thee! But while fame elates thee, Oh, still remember me!

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he— Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.! That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, Found death in life, may here find life in death.

I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light.

On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, “Where is it?”