Lines written in Kensington Gardens
N this lone open glade I lie,
Screened by deep boughs on either hand; And as its head, to stay the eye,
Those black-crowned, red-boled pine trees stand.
Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flits overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear.
Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.
In the huge world which roars hard by
Be others happy, if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.
I, on men's impious uproar hurled,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.
Yet here is peace forever new!
When I, who watch them, am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.
Then to their happy rest they pass;
The flowers close, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar!
The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
WHANNE that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to
the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour,
Of whiche vertue engendred in the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tender croppes, and the young sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So priketh him nature in hir corages;
That longen folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes,
To serve halwes couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Englelond, to Canterbury they wende,
The holy blissful martyr for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, what that they were seke.
Befelle, that, in that season on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devoute corage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felawship, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The chambres and the stables weren wide,
And wel we weren esed atte beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was gon to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everich on,
That I was of hir fellowship anon,
And made forwold erly for to rise,
To take oure way ther as I you devise.
But nathless, while I have time and space,
Or that I further in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to reson,
To tellen you all the condition
Of eche of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eke in what araie that they were inne:
And at a knight than wol I first beginne.
Geoffrey Chaucer.
OME on, sir; here's the place:-stand still.-
How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eye so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway
Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head;
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond' tall anchoring bark
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight; the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. — I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-bleached sand.
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence, slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in,
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