English

O'er all the hill-tops
Is quiet now,
In all the tree-tops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees:
Wait; soon like these
Thou too shalt rest.

I

Thou that from the heavens art,
Every pain and sorrow stillest,
And the doubly wretched heart
Doubly with refreshment fillest,
I am weary with contending!
Why this rapture and unrest?
Peace descending
Come, ah, come into my breast!

II

O er all the hill-tops
Is quiet now,
In all the tree-tops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees:
Wait; soon like these
Thou too shalt rest.

High on a mountain's highest ridge,
Where oft the stormy winter gale
Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds
It sweeps from vale to vale;
Not five yards from the mountain path,
This Thorn you on your left espy;
And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond,
Though but of compass small, and bare
To thirsty suns and parching air.
I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide. . . .

Nay, rack your brain — 'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;

I

" There is a Thorn — it looks so old,
In truth, you'd find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens is it overgrown.

II

" Like rock or stone, it is o'ergrown,

What things have we seen,
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtill flame,
As if that every one from whence they came,
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool, the rest
Of his dull life.

T' OTHER day, as Apollo sat pitching his darts
Through the clouds of November, by fits and by starts,
He began to consider how long it had been,
Since the bards of Old England had all been rung in.
" I think," said the God, recollecting, (and then
He fell twiddling a sunbeam as I may my pen,)
" I think — let me see — yes, it is, I declare,
As long ago now as that Buckingham there:
And yet I can't see why I've been so remiss,
Unless it may be — and it certainly is,
That since Dryden's fine verses, and Milton's sublime,

Trail all your pikes, dispirit every drum,
March in a slow procession from afar,
Ye silent, ye dejected men of war!
Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!
Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;
For see! where on the bier before ye lies
The pale, the fall'n, th' untimely sacrifice
To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol honour!

Although I work, and seldom cease,
At Dumas pere and Dumas fils ,
Alas, I cannot make me care
For Dumas fils and Dumas pere .

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Buried all of his libretti ,
Thought the matter over — then
Went and dug them up again.

The lives and times of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,