Romantic poems
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The Temple of Fame
© Alexander Pope
In that soft season, when descending show'rs
Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flow'rs;
Ballades II - Of The Book-Hunter
© Andrew Lang
Prince, all the things that tease and please,
Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears,
What are they but such toys as these,
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?
Autumn Plaint
© Stéphane Mallarme
Since Maria left me to go to another star - which one, Orion, Altair - or
you green Venus? - I have always loved solitude. How many long days I have passed alone with my cat. By alone I mean without a material being, and my cat is a mystic companion, a spirit. I can say then that I have passed long days alone with my cat and alone with one of the last authors of the Roman decadence; for since the white creature is no more I have loved, uniquely and strangely, everything summed up in the word: fall. So, in the year, my favourite season is the last slow part of summer that just precedes autumn, and, in the day, the hour when I walk is when the sun hesitates before vanishing, with rays of yellow bronze over the grey walls, and rays of red copper over the tiles. Literature, also, from which my spirit asks voluptuousness, that will be the agonised poetry of Romes last moments, so long as it does not breathe a breath of the reinvigorated stance of the Barbarians or stammer in childish Latin like Christian prose. I was reading then one of those dear poems (whose flakes of rouge have more charm for me than young flesh), and dipping a hand into the pure animal fur, when a street organ sounded languishingly and sadly under my window. It was playing in the great alley of poplars whose leaves, even in spring, seem mournful to me since Maria passed by them, on her last journey, lying among candles. The instrument of sadnesses, yes, certainly: the piano flashes, the violin gives off light from its torn fibres, but the street organ in memorys half-light made me dream despairingly. Now it murmured a delightfully common song that filled the faubourgs with joy, an old, banal tune: why did its words pierce my soul and make me cry, like any romantic ballad? I savoured it slowly and did not throw a coin through the window for fear of troubling my spirit and discovering that not only the instrument was playing.
Human Life
© Samuel Rogers
An hour like this is worth a thousand passed
In pomp or ease - 'Tis present to the last!
Years glide away untold - 'Tis still the same!
As fresh, as fair as on the day it came!
Tale IV
© George Crabbe
harm;
Give me thy pardon," and he look'd alarm:
Meantime the prudent Dinah had contrived
Her soul to question, and she then revived.
"See! my good friend," and then she raised her
The Lord of the Isles: Canto III.
© Sir Walter Scott
I.
Hast thou not mark'd, when o'er thy startled head
Griselda: A Society Novel In Verse - Chapter V
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Griselda's madness lasted forty days,
Forty eternities! Men went their ways,
And suns arose and set, and women smiled,
And tongues wagged lightly in impeachment wild
The Four Seasons : Summer
© James Thomson
From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
He comes attended by the sultry Hours,
Castles In Spain. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fifth)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How much of my young heart, O Spain,
Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne,
The Cid Campeador!
V. To the River Tweed.
© William Lisle Bowles
O TWEED! a stranger, that with wand'ring feet
O'er hill and dale has journey'd many a mile,
(If so his weary thoughts he might beguile)
Delighted turns thy beauteous scenes to greet.
VII. At a Village in Scotland....
© William Lisle Bowles
O NORTH! as thy romantic vales I leave,
And bid farewell to each retiring hill,
Where thoughtful fancy seems to linger still,
Tracing the broad bright landscape; much I grieve
Approach Of Summer
© William Lisle Bowles
How shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill
My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
The Missionary - Canto Third
© William Lisle Bowles
Come,--for the sun yet hangs above the bay,--
And whilst our time may brook a brief delay
Gertrude of Wyoming
© Thomas Campbell
PART IOn Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall,
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring,
Of what thy gentle people did befall;
The Splendid Shilling
© John Arthur Phillips
- - Sing, Heavenly Muse,
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime,
A Shilling, Breeches, and Chimera's Dire.
91. The Vision
© Robert Burns
And wear thou thisshe solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polishd leaves and berries red
Did rustling play;
And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away. [To Mrs. Stewart of Stair Burns presented a manuscript copy of the Vision. That copy embraces about twenty stanzas at the end of Duan First, which he cancelled when he came to print the price in his Kilmarnock volume. Seven of these he restored in printing his second edition, as noted on p. 174. The following are the verses which he left unpublished.]
