For those who enjoy poetry, here are some poems I am currently rereading over and again. I just bought several old, used books of poetry: Byron, Keats, Shelley; John Donne. The smell of old pages and ink is a fill for me.
Worth noting: Bright Star, a film centering on the great 19th century Romantic poet John Keats and his love affair with Fanny Brawn is the most inspiring film I’ve seen in a long time as a writer and reader. Go see it with a date. Or by yourself.
“She Walks in Beauty…”
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d that nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Lord Byron, 1814
“The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept”
The harp the monarch minstrel swept,
The King of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music hallow’d while she wept
O’er tones her heart of hearts had given.
Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven!
It soften’d men of iron mould;
It gave them virtues not their own;
No ear so dull, no soul so cold,
That felt not, fired not to the tone,
Till David’s lyre grew mightier than his throne!
It told the triumphs of our King,
It wafted glory to our God;
It made our gladden’d valleys ring,
The cedars bow, the mountains nod;
Its sound aspired to Heaven, and there abode!
Since then, though heard on earth no more,
Devotion and her daughter Love
Still bid the bursting spirit soar
To sounds that seem as from above,
In dreams that day’s broad light can not remove.
Lord Byron, 1814
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, 1820
