TO BLOSSOMS By Robert Herrick AIR pledges of a fruitful tree, Your date is not so past, To blush and gently smile, What! were ye born to be An hour or half's delight, 'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth, T THE HOUSEKEEPER By Charles Lamb HE frugal snail, with forecast of repose, of rain, Retreats to his small domicile again. Touch but a tip of him, a horn, - 'tis well, - He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure - he's sure to be at home. THE CLOUD By Percy Bysshe Shelley BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack When the morning-star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, That orbèd maiden with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march. When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky: I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. THE RECOLLECTION By Percy Bysshe Shelley OW the last day of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead, Rise, Memory, and write its Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace For now the Earth has changed its face, We wandered to the pine forest That skirts the Ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The whispering waves were half asleep, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of Heaven lay; |