All poems

“Ah, what is life? A bubble blown across Time’s mystic stream; its secret source, alas! unknown; its future — still a dream?…”

“A glimpse through an interstice caught, of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner…”

“Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart; you’d have me know of you your least transgression, and so the intimate places of your heart, kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.…”

“A little black thing among the snow, crying “weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” “They are both gone up to the church to pray”…”

“No longer mourn for me when I am dead than you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell…”

“Half of my life is gone, and I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth, to build some tower of song with lofty parapet.…”

“Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.…”

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love…”

“If I had but two little wings and were a little feathery bird, to you I’d fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle things, and I stay here.…”

“It’s all a farce, — these tales they tell about the breezes sighing, and moans astir o’er field and dell, because the year is dying.…”

“To one who has been long in city pent, ’tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament.…”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

“When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me; plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree…”

“Out through the fields and the woods and over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view and looked at the world, and descended;…”

“They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours commiserating each the other’s woe, to mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.…”

“We have not heard the music of the spheres, the song of star to star, but there are sounds more deep than human joy and human tears…”

“I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: Penelope did this too. And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day and undoing it all through the night…”

“O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosphers pinched and poked thee, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty…”

“Imagine that any mind ever thought a red geranium! As if the redness of a red geranium could be anything but a sensual experience…”

“As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, leads by the hand her little child to bed, half willing, half reluctant to be led, and leave his broken playthings on the floor…”

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room was like the Stillness in the Air – between the Heaves of Storm…”

“All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman’s face, or worse—the seeming needs of my fool-driven land…”

“Afar on the pathless prairies the rarest of flowers abound; and in the dark caves of the valleys there is wealth that will never be found…”

“Sweet evenings come and go, love, they came and went of yore: This evening of our life, love, shall go and come no more…”

“If all the trees in all the woods were men; and each and every blade of grass a pen; if every leaf on every shrub and tree turned to a sheet of foolscap…”

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”

“Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, when I put out to sea…”

“The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night, as a feather is wafted downward from an eagle in his flight…”

“I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, and did He stoop to quibble could tell why the little buried mole continues blind…”

“My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell; we may not meet to-morrow; who can tell what mighty ills befall our little band…”

“The fountains mingle with the river and the rivers with the ocean, the winds of heaven mix for ever with a sweet emotion…”

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire…”

“Had he and I but met by some old ancient inn, we should have sat us down to wet right many a nipperkin!…”

“Never give all the heart, for love will hardly seem worth thinking of to passionate women if it seem certain…”

“I have to live with myself, and so, I want to be fit for myself to know. I want to be able as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye…”

“I shall forget you presently, my dear, so make the most of this, your little day, your little month, your little half a year, ere I forget, or die, or move away…”

“Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; taking me back down the vista of years, till I see a child sitting under the piano…”

“I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong…”

“Something tapped on the pane of my room when there was never a trace of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom my weary Belovéd’s face…”

“Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (a very plain brown stone will do,) that I may call my own…”

“Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need…”

“Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, may gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, as thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy…”

“Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe are brackish with the salt of human tears!…”

““Yes!” I answered you last night; “No!” this morning, Sir, I say! Colours, seen by candle-light, will not look the same by day…”

“Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look…”

“This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, sails the unshadowed main,—the venturous bark that flings on the sweet summer wind its purpled wings…”

“If all the world and love were young, and truth in every Shepherd’s tongue, these pretty pleasures might me move, to live with thee, and be thy love…”

“Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove, that valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods, or steepy mountain yields…”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could…”

“Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, no question was asked me—it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try…”

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?…”

“If you sit down at set of sun and count the acts that you have done, and, counting, find one self-denying deed, one word that eased the heart of him who heard…”

“The rain set early in to-night, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake…”

“My love is like to ice, and I to fire. How comes it then that this her cold so great is not dissolved through my so hot desire…”

“Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow—you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream…”

“I walk down the garden paths, and all the daffodils are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden paths in my stiff, brocaded gown…”

“I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-grey, and Winter’s dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day…”

“Pray why are you so bare, so bare, oh, bough of the old oak-tree; and why, when I go through the shade you throw, runs a shudder over me?…”

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…”

“I never said I loved you, John. Why will you tease me, day by day, and wax a weariness to think upon with always do and pray?…”

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”

“I remember rooms that have had their part in the steady slowing down of the heart. The room in Paris, the room at Geneva…”

“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing…”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove…”

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem…”

“i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does…”

“His chosen comrades thought at school he must grow a famous man; he thought the same and lived by rule, all his twenties crammed with toil…”

“If one could have that little head of hers painted upon a background of pale gold, such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers…”

“If she would come to me here, now the sunken swaths are glittering paths to the sun, and the swallows cut clear into the low sun—if she came to me here…”

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless…”

“Jack fell as he’d have wished, the Mother said, and folded up the letter that she’d read. The Colonel writes so nicely…”

“The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might. He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright, and this was odd, because it was the middle of the night…”

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain under my head till morning…”

“I heard a small sad sound, and stood awhile among the tombs around. Wherefore, old friends, said I, are you distrest, now, screened from life’s unrest?…”

“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; how restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, streaking the darkness radiantly…”

“Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow…”

“His Grace! impossible! what, dead! Of old age too, and in his bed! And could that mighty warrior fall, and so inglorious, after all?…”

“I grant you ample leave to use the hoary formula ‘I am’ naming the emptiness where thought is not…”

“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…”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, before high-pilèd books, in charactery, hold like rich garners the full ripened grain…”

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once…”

“When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, and that one Talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless…”

“Who knows if the moon’s a balloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky—filled with pretty people?…”

“Happy the man, whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air, in his own ground…”

“Whoever you are holding me now in hand, without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different…”

“By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: that, at his hand's light quiver by her head,the strange low sobs that shook their common bed were called into her with a sharp surprise…”

“I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light…”

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass…”

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—little we see in Nature that is ours…”

“What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, the luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?—Yes, but not this alone…”

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive. I call that piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands worked busily a day, and there she stands…”

“She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes…”

“It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race…”

“If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love’s sake only. Do not say “I love her for her smile…”

“Not a line of her writing have I, not a thread of her hair, no mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there…”

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend…”

“Three summers since I chose a maid, too young maybe—but more’s to do at harvest-time than bide and woo…”

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and the dim and the dark cloths…”

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him how to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run…”

“I met a traveller from an antique land, who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert…”

“Before man came to blow it right the wind once blew itself untaught, and did its loudest day and night in any rough place where it caught…”