5

10

Like a glowworm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the

view;

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers,
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

15 Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine !

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

20 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt,

25 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

TO A SKYLARK

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields or waves or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

37

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 5

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be;

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee;

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

10

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 15

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest

thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

5 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground.

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

10 The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
15 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

20 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

"LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT"

39

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

ENGLAND, 1801-1890

"Lead, Kindly Light"

Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou

Shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power has blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on

O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

10

15

EIGHTH YEAR-SECOND HALF

ALFRED TENNYSON

ENGLAND, 1809-1892

Song of the Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flew,

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

40