Metre / Versification Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;

That time of year them mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold—
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 73
You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno.
You and I will never see that picture.
While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he soften'd o'er his outlined angel,
In they broke, those "people of importance":
We and Bice bear the loss forever.
BROWNING, One Word More
I have found out a gift for my fair,
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.
SHENSTONE, Pastoral Ballad
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
HOOD, Bridge of Sighs
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake, The Tyger
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
'Say Not, the Struggle Naught Availeth.'
A.C. Clough
Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eye, of brow.
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 106

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I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance. If you go over desert and mountain,
TENNYSON, The Brook Far into the country of Sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies. And maybe for months and for years;
To the Small Celandine. You shall come with a heart that is bursting
Wordsworth For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
The mountain sheep are sweeter, At length,—to the Fountain of Tears.
But the valley sheep are fatter; ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY, The Fountain of Tears.
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter. Though the day of my destiny's over,
PEACOCK, War-song of Dinas Vawr, from The Misfortunes of And the star of my fate hath declined,
Elphin Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Canst thou say in thine heart Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
Thou hast seen with thine eyes It shrunk not to share it with me,
With what cunning of art And the love which my spirit hath painted
Thou wast wrought in what wise, It never hath found but in thee.
By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my BYRON, Stanzas to Augusta
breast to the skies?
SWINBURNE, Hertha

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The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
BYRON, The Destruction of Sennacherib
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she think not well of me,
What care I how fair she be?
WITHER, The Author's Resolution.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
KEATS, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round.
TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin
Stanza forms
She, she is gone; she's gone; when thou know'st this,
What fragmentary rubbish this world is
Thou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought;
He honours it too much that thinks it nought.
DONNE, Anatomy of the World
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Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you no more can hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti, “Remember”
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
[129]Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide
Who seeketh Heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.
Then farewell, world! thy uttermost I see:
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
For cares of kings, that rule as you have rul'd,
For public wealth, and not for private joy,
Do waste man's life and hasten crooked age,
With furrowed face, and with enfeebled limbs,
To draw on creeping death a swifter pace.
They two, yet young, shall bear the parted reign
With greater ease than one, now old, alone
Can wield the whole, for whom much harder is
With lessened strength the double weight to bear.
Marlowe, Gorboduc, Act I, scene ii.
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But I feel not
This deity in my bosom. Twenty consciences,
That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they
And melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother,
No better than the earth he lies upon
If he were that which now he's like, that's dead;
Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,
Can lay to be for ever; whiles you, doing thus,
To the perpetual wink for aye might put
This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who
Should not upbraid our course.
Shakespeare, The Tempest (II, i)
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.
R. FROST, Mending Wall Blank verse