I I weep for Adonais—he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"
II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania
Our sweet companions—sharing your bunk and your bed The versts and the versts and the versts and a hunk of your bread The wheels' endless round The rivers, streaming to ground The road. . .
Oh the heavenly the Gypsy the early dawn light Remember the breeze in the morning, the steppe silver-bright Wisps of blue smoke from the rise
The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
Toward evening, as the light failed and the pear tree at my window darkened, I put down my book and stood at the open door, the first raindrops gusting in the eaves, a smell of wet clay in the wind. Sixty years ago, lying beside my father, half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain drummed against our tent, I heard
I don’t belong in this century—who does? In my time, summer came someplace in June— The cutbanks blazing with roses, the birds brazen, and the astonished Pastures frisking with young calves . . . That was in the country— I don’t mean another country, I mean in the country: And the country is lost. I don’t mean just lost to me, Nor in the way of metaphorical loss—it’s lost that way too—
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed, Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
O what a strange parcel of creatures are we, Scarce ever to quarrel, or even agree; We all are alone, though at home altogether, Except to the fire constrained by the weather; Then one says, ‘’Tis cold’, which we all of us know, And with unanimity answer, ‘’Tis so’: With shrugs and with shivers all look at the fire, And shuffle ourselves and our chairs a bit nigher; Then quickly, preceded by silence profound, A yawn epidemical catches around: Like social companions we never fall out, Nor ever care what one another’s about; To comfort each other is never our plan, For to please ourselves, truly, is more than we can.
Calm was the sea to which your course you kept, Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas! Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breeze Wafted from mothers that of old have wept. All souls of children taken as they slept Are your companions, partners of your ease,
Likely as not a ruined head gasket Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver: A machine involved with itself, a concentrated Hot lump of a machine Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops,
I’m eating a little supper by the bright window. The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn. Outside my door, the quiet roads lead, after a short walk, to open fields. I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows how many women are eating now. My body is calm: labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.
Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch
Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons quelque chose, qui ne nous déplaît pas. ["In the hard times of our best friends we find something that doesn't displease us."] As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature, I believe 'em true: They argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind.
In unexperienced infancy Many a sweet mistake doth lie: Mistake though false, intending true; A seeming somewhat more than view; That doth instruct the mind In things that lie behind, And many secrets to us show Which afterwards we come to know.
Thus did I by the water’s brink Another world beneath me think; And while the lofty spacious skies Reversèd there, abused mine eyes, I fancied other feet Came mine to touch or meet;
My mind was once the true survey Of all these meadows fresh and gay, And in the greenness of the grass Did see its hopes as in a glass; When Juliana came, and she What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
But these, while I with sorrow pine, Grew more luxuriant still and fine, That not one blade of grass you spy’d But had a flower on either side; When Juliana came, and she What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
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