The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

The glitt’ring Waters on the Shingles roll’d:

  The timid Girls, half-dreading their design,

  Dip the small Foot in the retarded Brine,

  And search for crimson Weeds, which spreading flow,

  Or lie like Pictures on the Sand below;

  With all those bright red Pebbles, that the Sun

  Through the small Waves so softly shines upon;

  And those live lucid Jellies which the eye

  Delights to trace as they swim glitt’ring by:

  Pearl-shells and rubied Star-fish they admire,

  And will arrange above the Parlour-fire, –

  Tokens of Bliss! – ‘Oh! horrible! – a Wave

  Roars as it rises – save me, Edward! save!’

  She cries: – Alas! the Watchman on his way

  Calls and lets in – Truth, Terror, and the Day.

  Alas! for Peter not an helping Hand,

  So was he hated, could he now command;

  Alone he row’d his Boat, alone he cast

  His Nets beside, or made his Anchor fast;

  To hold a Rope or hear a Curse was none, –

  He toil’d and rail’d; he groan’d and swore alone.

  Thus by himself compell’d to live each day,

  To wait for certain hours the Tide’s delay;

  At the same times the same dull views to see,

  The bounding Marsh-bank and the blighted Tree;

  The Water only, when the Tides were high,

  When low, the Mud half-cover’d and half-dry;

  The Sun-burnt Tar that blisters on the Planks,

  And Bank-side Stakes in their uneven ranks;

  Heaps of entangled Weeds that slowly float,

  As the Tide rolls by the impeded Boat.

  When Tides were neap, and, in the sultry day,

  Through the tall bounding Mud-banks made their way,

  Which on each side rose swelling, and below

  The dark warm Flood ran silently and slow;

  There anchoring, Peter chose from Man to hide,

  There hang his Head, and view the lazy Tide

  In its hot slimy Channel slowly glide;

  Where the small Eels that left the deeper way

  For the warm Shore, within the Shallows play;

  Where gaping Muscles, left upon the Mud,

  Slope their slow passage to the fallen Flood; –

  Here dull and hopeless he’ll lie down and trace

  How sidelong Crabs had scrawl’d their crooked race;

  Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry

  Of fishing Gull or clanging Golden-eye;

  What time the Sea-birds to the Marsh would come,

  And the loud Bittern, from the Bull-rush home,

  Gave from the Salt-ditch side the bellowing Boom:

  He nurst the Feelings these dull Scenes produce,

  And lov’d to stop beside the opening Sluice;

  Where the small Stream, confin’d in narrow bound,

  Ran with a dull, unvaried, sad’ning sound;

  Where all presented to the Eye or Ear,

  Oppress’d the Soul! with Misery, Grief, and Fear.

  SIR WALTER SCOTT from The Lady of the Lake

  Coronach

  He is gone on the mountain,

  He is lost to the forest,

  Like a summer-dried fountain,

  When our need was the sorest.

  5

  The font, reappearing,

  From the rain-drops shall borrow,

  But to us comes no cheering,

  To Duncan no morrow!

  The hand of the reaper

  10

  Takes the ears that are hoary,

  But the voice of the weeper

  Wails manhood in glory.

  The autumn winds rushing

  Waft the leaves that are searest,

  15

  But our flower was in flushing,

  When blighting was nearest.

  Fleet foot on the correi,

  Sage counsel in cumber,

  Red hand in the foray,

  20

  How sound is thy slumber!

  Like the dew on the mountain,

  Like the foam on the river,

  Like the bubble on the fountain,

  Thou art gone, and for ever!

  1815 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON Stanzas for Music

  There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

  When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay;

  ’Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,

  But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

  Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness,

  Are driven o’er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess:

  The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain

  The shore to which their shiver’d sail shall never stretch again.

  Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;

  It cannot feel for others’ woes, it dare not dream its own;

  That heavy chill has frozen o’er the fountain of our tears,

  And tho’ the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.

  Tho’ wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,

  Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;

  ’Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin’d turret wreath,

  All green and wildly fresh without but worn and grey beneath.

  Oh could I feel as I have felt, – or be what I have been,

  Or weep as I could once have wept, o’er many a vanished scene:

  As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,

  So midst the wither’d waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

  1816 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  So twice five miles of fertile ground

  With walls and towers were girdled round:

  And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

  And here were forests ancient as the hills,

  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

  But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

  Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

  A savage place! as holy and enchanted

  As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

  By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

  And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

  As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

  A mighty fountain momently was forced:

  Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

  Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

  Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

  And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

  It flung up momently the sacred river.

  Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

  Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

  Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

  And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

  And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

  Ancestral voices prophesying war!

  The shadow of the dome of pleasure

  Floated midway on the waves;

  Where was heard the mingled measure

  From the fountain and the caves.

  It was a miracle of rare device,

  A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

  A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid,

  And on her dulcimer she played,


  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song,

  To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

  That with music loud and long,

  I would build that dome in air,

  That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

  And all who heard should see them there,

  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

  Weave a circle round him thrice,

  And close your eyes with holy dread,

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.

  (written 1798)

  JOHN KEATS On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

  Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

  Round many western islands have I been

  Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

  Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

  That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

  Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

  Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

  Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken;

  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY To Wordsworth

  Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

  That things depart which never may return:

  Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,

  Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

  These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

  Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

  Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine

  On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

  Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

  Above the blind and battling multitude:

  In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

  Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, –

  Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

  Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from The Rime of the 1817 Ancient Mariner

  PART IV

  ‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner! The Wedding Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him.

  I fear thy skinny hand!

  And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

  As is the ribbed sea-sand.

  I fear thee and thy glittering eye,

  And thy skinny hand, so brown.’ –

  Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.

  This body dropt not down.

  Alone, alone, all, all alone,

  Alone on a wide wide sea!

  And never a saint took pity on

  My soul in agony.

  The many men, so beautiful! He despiseth the creatures of the calm.

  And they all dead did lie:

  And a thousand thousand slimy things

  Lived on; and so did I.

  I looked upon the rotting sea, And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.

  And drew my eyes away;

  I looked upon the rotting deck,

  And there the dead men lay.

  I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

  But or ever a prayer had gusht,

  A wicked whisper came, and made

  My heart as dry as dust.

  I closed my lids, and kept them close,

  And the balls like pulses beat;

  For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

  Lay like a load on my weary eye,

  And the dead were at my feet.

  The cold sweat melted from their limbs, But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.

  Nor rot nor reek did they:

  The look with which they looked on me

  Had never passed away.

  An orphan’s curse would drag to hell

  A spirit from on high;

  But oh! more horrible than that

  Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!

  Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,

  And yet I could not die.

  Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

  Like April hoar-frost spread;

  But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,

  The charméd water burnt alway

  A still and awful red.

  Beyond the shadow of the ship, By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm.

  I watched the water-snakes:

  They moved in tracks of shining white,

  And when they reared, the elfish light

  Fell off in hoary flakes.

  Within the shadow of the ship

  I watched their rich attire:

  Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

  They coiled and swam; and every track

  Was a flash of golden fire.

  O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty and their happiness.

  Their beauty might declare:

  A spring of love gushed from my heart,

  And I blessed them unaware: He blesseth them in his heart.

  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

  And I blessed them unaware.

  The selfsame moment I could pray; The spell begins to break.

  And from my neck so free

  The Albatross fell off, and sank

  Like lead into the sea.

  JOHN KEATS

  After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains

  For a long dreary season, comes a day

  Born of the gentle South, and clears away,

  From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.

  The anxious month, relieving from its pains,

  Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May,

  The eyelids with the passing coolness play,

  Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.

  The calmest thoughts come round us – as of leaves

  Budding, – fruit ripening in stillness, – autumn suns

  Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves, –

  Sweet Sappho’s cheek, – a sleeping infant’s breath, –

  The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs, –