Emotions and Feelings

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.

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!

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

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

To make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O, for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O, for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow