Emotions and Feelings

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.

Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration.

Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will! Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

I thought of Chatterton, 4 the marvelous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him 5 who walked in glory and in joy Following his plow, along the mountainside: By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: 2 A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover’s head! “O mercy!” to myself I cried, “If Lucy should be dead!”

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.

Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened.

In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened.

His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?

Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness.

And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.