ROMANTIC POETRY

LONDON- WILLIAM BLAKE
I wanderthro’ eachcharter’dstreet,
Near where thecharter’dThames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’dmanacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
EveryblackningChurch appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

THE TABLES TURNED- WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Up!up!myFriend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up!up!myFriend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun above the mountain’s head,
A fresheninglustremellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet eveningyellow.
Books! ’tisa dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music!onmy life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.
And hark!howblithe thethrostlesings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC-LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice tome:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And thelull’dwinds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gentlyheaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell ofSummer’socean.

ENGLAND IN 1819-PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed inth’ untilled field;
An army, whomliberticideand prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
ReligionChristless, Godlessa book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute,unrepealed
Are graves from which a glorious Phantommay
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

TO SLEEP-JOHN KEATS

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’deyes,embower’dfrom the light,
Enshadedin forgetfulness divine:
OsoothestSleep!ifso it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.

Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.