POETRY "Many people in our day, readily merchants and often lawyers, say and repeat, 'Poetry is gone.' It is almost as if they said, ‘There are no more roses; spring has breathed its last; the sun has lost the habit of rising; roam about all the fields of the earth, you will not find a butterfly; there is no more light in the moon, and the nightingale sings no more; the lion no longer roars; the eagle no longer soars; the Alps and the Pyrenees are gone; there are no more lovely girls and handsome young men; no one thinks any more of the graves; the mother no longer loves her child; heaven is quenched; the human heart is dead.'"-Victor Hugo. Kubla Khan Pompey's Ghost Absence. Burial of Lincoln It Never Comes Again The Sword Song . The Lady's Dream The Skeleton in Armour Robin Hood The Iceberg The Fool's Prayer The Fancy Concert A Curse for a Nation Hamlet at the Boston William M. Thackeray Percy Bysshe Shelley. Elegy in a Country Church-Yard Thomas Gray. 588 Geo. Gordon, Lord Byron 590 William Allingham . John Hay Nora Perry Thomas Bailey Aldrich. M. E. W. Sherwood 592 601 604 An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty Percy Bysshe Shelley. 606 KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. By SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. N Xanadu did Kubla Khan IN A stately pleasure-dome decree: Through caverns measureless to man So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, The shadow of the dome of pleasure Where was heard the mingled measure It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! SON. AT T Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fiftythree!'' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty three?" Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain." So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; |