Beauty to him is Paradise

He never tires of lustrous eyes;
Quaffing his joy, the world apart,
Love lives a summer in his heart.

His lands are never bought nor sold-
His wealth is more to him than gold;
On the green hills, when life is done,
He sleeps like fair Endymion.

THE BARD

WILLIAM BLAKE

Hear the voice of the Bard,

Who present, past and future sees;

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walked among the ancient trees.

From A LOST GOD

FRANCIS W. BOURDILLON

Ah, happy who have seen Him, whom the world
Calls madmen! These alone are poets-not
The apt mellifluous metrist,-not the deft
Industrious rhymer,-needs the fire of heaven,
The earthquake, the long lonely hour with God,
Before our flower-edged lyric rivulets
Flood over with the impetuous dithyramb.

What is it makes a poet's utterance strong
Except the striving to make wings of words,
And mount from apprehended thought to thought
Unapprehended? And what impulse moves
To such ill-guerdoned labor but the sense
Of things insensuous, the glint of rays

Nebulous, indistinguished, which the eyes
Must gaze and gaze at till they fix the star,-
Visions of water in the vacant sand,-

Elysian stands in the waste of sea?

Such have I seen, such phantasms all my life Have followed, knowing somewhere they must lie Discoverable-in our eyes unreal,

Yet real somewhere.

THE POET

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

The
poet hath the child's sight in his breast,
And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed,
He views with the first glory. Fair and good
Fall never on him, at the fairest, best,
But stand before him holy and undressed
In week-day false conventions, such as would
Drag other men down from the altitude
Of primal types, too early dispossessed.
Why, God would tire of all his heaven as soon
As thou, Oh, God-like poet, didst,

Of daily and nightly sights of sun and moon!
And therefore hath he set thee in their midst,
Where men may hear thy wonder's ceaseless tune,
And praise his world forever, as thou bidst.

THE PEASANT POET

JOHN CLARE

He loved the brook's soft sound,
The swallow swimming by,
He loved the daisy-covered ground,
The cloud-bedappled sky.

To him the dismal storm appeared
The very voice of God:

And where the evening rock was reared

Stood Moses with his rod.

And everything his eyes surveyed,
The insects in the brake,

Were creatures God Almighty made,

He loved them for His sake

A silent man in life's affairs,
A thinker from a boy,

A peasant in his daily cares,
A poet in his joy.

THE POET'S CALL

THOMAS CURTIS CLARK

By day the fields and meadows cry;
By night the bright stars plead;
He hears the message from on high,
And to the call gives heed.

The roses tremble as he nears,
And cry, "Rejoice, rejoice!"
The rocks break forth as he appears,
"God sends a Voice, a Voice!"

FRAGMENT

WILLIAM COWPER

Pity, Religion has so seldom found

A skilful guide into poetic ground!

The flowers would spring where'er she deigned to stray, And every muse attend her on her way.

THOUGHT

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought,
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;

Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;

We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart, though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is a social company

But a babbling summer stream? What is our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought,

Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,

Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,

Melting, flowing into one.

INSPIRATIONS

WILLIAM JAMES DAWSON

Sometimes, I know not why, nor how, nor whence
A change comes over me, and then the task

Of common life slips from me. Would you ask
What power this is which bids the world go hence?
Who knows? I only feel a faint perfume
Steal through the rooms of life; a saddened sense
Of something lost; a music as of brooks

That babble to the sea; pathetic looks

Of closing eyes that in a darkened room
Once dwelt on mine: I feel the general doom
Creep nearer, and with God I stand alone.

O mystic sense of sudden quickening!

Hope's lark-song rings, or life's deep undertone
Wails through my heart—and then I needs must sing.

THE DREAM

Firdausi (From the Persian)

Translated by A. V. Williams Jackson

I a.

My heart was fired, as from his sight it turned
Toward the world's Sovereign Throne, and inly yearned,

'May I lay hand upon that book some day

And tell, in my own words, that ancient lay!'

Countless the persons whom I sought for aid,
As I of fleeting time was sore afraid
Lest I in turn not long enough should live,
But to another's hand the task must give.