Meg Kearney: Hearts of Poets (Two Poems)
By the time his body washed ashore, all
that was left was burned on the beach, deathbed
a pyre lit by three friends; two then fled
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower…
Lord Byron: Epitaph to a Dog
…all the Virtues of Man
Without his Vices.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Love’s Philosophy
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
John Clare: The Thunder Mutters
The thunder mutters louder & more loud
With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Frost at Midnight
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch…
Charlotte Turner Smith: On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic
In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,
I see him more with envy than fear
Sandra Shapshay: At once tiny and huge — what is this feeling we call ‘sublime’?
Have you ever felt awe and exhilaration while contemplating a vista of jagged, snow-capped mountains? Or been fascinated but also a bit unsettled while beholding a thunderous waterfall such as … Continue reading
William Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 . Five years have past; five summers, with the … Continue reading
Dorothy Wordsworth: The moon had the old moon in her arms
The columbine … is a graceful slender creature, a female seeking retirement, and growing freest and most graceful where it is most alone. I observed that the more shaded plants … Continue reading
John Keats: To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To … Continue reading
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples
The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might, The breath of the … Continue reading
Dawn Potter: Lost Time
In “my dream about time,” the poet Lucille Clifton writes of “a woman unlike myself” who “is running down the long hall of a lifeless house.” I am fifty-two years … Continue reading
