The Hundred Best English Poems eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 110 pages of information about The Hundred Best English Poems.

The Hundred Best English Poems eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 110 pages of information about The Hundred Best English Poems.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
  Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
  Since summer first was leavy: 
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
  And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
  Into Hey nonny, nonny.

72. Song from ’Cymbeline.’

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
  Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
  Home art gone and ta’en thy wages: 
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
  Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
  To thee the reed is as the oak: 
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
  Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
  Thou hast finish’d joy and moan: 
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee! 
Nor no witchcraft charm thee! 
Ghost unlaid forbear thee! 
Nothing ill come near thee! 
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!

Cambridge Shakespeare Text.

* * * * *

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

73. Song from ’Prometheus Unbound.’

On a poet’s lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality! 
One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee.

74. Ode to the West Wind.

I.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes:  O, thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill: 

Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

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Project Gutenberg
The Hundred Best English Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.