Emotions and Feelings

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

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

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round.

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?”

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?”

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemèd there to be.

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemèd there to be.

“Ha! ha!” quoth he, “full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.”

Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.