TO DEATH

Thou bidst me come away,
And I'll no longer stay,
Than for to shed some tears
For faults of former years;
And to repent some crimes
Done in the present times;
And next, to take a bit
Of bread, and wine with it;
To don my robes of love,
Fit for the place above;
To gird my loins about
With charity throughout;
And so to travel hence
With feet of innocence;
These done, I'll only cry,
"God, mercy!" and so die.

Robert Herrick

MORNING PRAYER

When with the virgin morning thou dost rise,
Crossing thyself, come thus to sacrifice;
First wash thy heart in innocence; then bring
Pure hands, pure habits, pure, pure every thing.
Robert Herrick

THE NILE

It flows through old hush'd Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roam'd through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

Leigh Hunt

"MEN OF ENGLAND, HEIRS OF GLORY"

(From "The Mask of Anarchy ")

Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,}
Hopes of her, and one another;

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-

Ye are many

they are few.

-

Percy Bysshe Shelley

THE FUTURE

What may we take into the vast Forever?
That marble door

Admits no fruit of all our long endeavour,
No fame-wreathed crown we wore,

No garnered lore.

What can we bear beyond the unknown portal?
No gold, no gains

Of all our toiling: in the life immortal
No hoarded wealth remains,

Nor gilds, nor stains.

Naked from out that far abyss behind us

We entered here:

No word came with our coming, to remind us
What wondrous world was near,

No hope, no fear.

Into the silent, starless Night before us,
Naked we glide:

No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us,
No comrade at our side,

No chart, no guide.

Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow,

Our footsteps fare:

The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow

His love alone is there,

No curse, no care.

Edward Rowland Sill

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare

BRIGHT STAR! WOULD I WERE STEADFAST AS THOU ART

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:

No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, - or else swoon to death.
John Keats

William

SHE CAME AND WENT

As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;
I only know she came and went.

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,

The blue dome's measureless content, So my soul held that moment's heaven; I only know she came and went.

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps
The orchards full of bloom and scent,
So clove her May my wintry sleeps;
I only know she came and went.

An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;
I only know she came and went.

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim,
And life's last oil is nearly spent,
One gush of light these eyes will brim,
Only to think she came and went.

James Russell Lowell