The Household Book of Poetry

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

Even such a happy child of earth am I; RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. Even as these blissful creatures do I fare; Far from the world I walk, and from all care. But there may come another day to me—

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night-Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright—
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove

II.

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the

moors

The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she
doth run.

broods;

The jay makes answer as the magpie chat- As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

ters;

And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of But how can he expect that others should

waters.

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

III.

IV.

VI.

Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low-
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came―
Dim sadness, and blind thoughts, I knew not,

nor could name.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life's business were a summer mood

I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:

VII.

643

I was a traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;

VIII.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,

I heard the woods and distant waters roar-
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy.
The pleasant season did my heart employ;
My old remembrances went from me wholly-Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melan-

When I with these untoward thoughts had
striven,

choly.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain

side.

By our own spirits we are deified;
We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency
and madness.

Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a man before me unawares-

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the The oldest man he seemed that ever wore might

gray hairs.

IX.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,
Wonder to all who do the same espy
By what means it could hither come, and
whence;

So that it seems a thing endued with sense-
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun it-
self-

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed! Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought,

As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

JOHN KEATS.

THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE.

MARTIAL, the things that do attain

The happy life be these, I findThe riches left, not got with pain;

The fruitful ground, the quiet mind,

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;

No charge of rule, nor governance; Without disease, the healthful life;

The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;

True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care,

Where wine the wit may not oppress;

The faithful wife, without debate;

Such sleeps as may beguile the night; Contented with thine own estate,

Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

LORD SURREY,

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born!

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There, under ebon shades, and lowbrowed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, In heav'n y-cleped Euphrosyne, And, by men, heart-easing Mirth! Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; Or whether (as some sages sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing— As he met her once a-MayingThere, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity—

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek—
Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come! and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free-
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night

L'ALLEGRO.

From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid god morrow,
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn,
From the side of some hoar hill
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleas-
ures,

Whilst the landscape round it measures
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray-
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest-
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neigboring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.

Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,

647

Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale
With stories told of many a feat:
How fairy Mab the junkets eat-
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by friar's lantern led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, crop-full, out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.

Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold In weeds of peace high triumphs hold— With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp and feast and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry— Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream: Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce,

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