Smile poems
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Sappho - A Monodrama
© Robert Southey
To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.
Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet V
© Robert Southey
Did then the bold Slave rear at last the Sword
Of Vengeance? drench'd he deep its thirsty blade
In the cold bosom of his tyrant lord?
Oh! who shall blame him? thro' the midnight shade
Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet II
© Robert Southey
Why dost thou beat thy breast and rend thine hair,
And to the deaf sea pour thy frantic cries?
Before the gale the laden vessel flies;
The Heavens all-favoring smile, the breeze is fair;
Ode Written On The First Of January
© Robert Southey
Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!
Ode Written On The First Of December
© Robert Southey
Tho' now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the green wood shade,
I love thee Winter! well.
Mary - A Ballad
© Robert Southey
Author Note: The story of the following ballad was related to me, when a school boy, as a fact which had really happened in the North of England. I have
adopted the metre of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo and Imogene--a poem deservedly
popular.
Hymn To The Penates
© Robert Southey
Yet one Song more! one high and solemn strain
Ere PAEAN! on thy temple's ruined wall
I hang the silent harp: there may its strings,
When the rude tempest shakes the aged pile,
Go, Valentine
© Robert Southey
Go, Valentine, and tell that lovely maid
Whom fancy still will portray to my sight,
How here I linger in this sullen shade,
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night;
Birth-Day Ode 03
© Robert Southey
If FAME allure thee, climb not thou
To that steep mountain's craggy brow
Where stands her stately pile;
For far from thence does PEACE abide,
And thou shall find FAME'S favouring smile
Cold as the feeble Sun on Heclas snow-clad side,
Birth-Day Ode 02
© Robert Southey
Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey
The book of Nature with unheeding eye;
For never beams the rising orb of day,
For never dimly dies the refluent ray,
But as the moralizer marks the sky,
He broods with strange delight upon futurity.
Ariste
© Robert Southey
Low to the finished form the nations round
In adoration bent the pious knee;
With myrtle wreaths the artist's brow they crowned,
Whose skill, Ariste, only imaged thee.
Ill-fated artist, doomed so wide to seek
The charms that blossom on Ariste's cheek!
How To Kill
© Keith Douglas
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters.
© Thomas Carew
SO grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
Song. Murdering Beauty
© Thomas Carew
I'LL gaze no more on her bewitching face,
Since ruin harbours there in every place ;
For my enchanted soul alike she drowns
With calms and tempests of her smiles and frowns.
The Spring
© Thomas Carew
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
Lips and Eyes.
© Thomas Carew
IN Celia's face a question did arise,
Which were more beautiful, her lips or eyes ?
We, said the eyes, send forth those pointed darts
Which pierce the hardest adamantine hearts.
