Sonnet VI, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Going Back, by D. H. Lawrence

The night turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.

But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.

I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure platform;
My spirit hears

Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.

There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.

There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.

Brennbaum by Ezra Pound

The sky-like limpid eyes,
The circular infant’s face,
The stiffness from spats to collar
Never relaxing into grace;
The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,
Showed only when the daylight fell
Level across the face
Of Brennbaum “The Impeccable.”

To Sleep, by John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!   Shutting with careful fingers and benign Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,   Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,   In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws   Around my bed its lulling charities;   Then save me, or the passèd day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; Save me from curious conscience, that still lords   Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,   And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

To Winter, by William Blake

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.

He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms; till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

Winter Trees, by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Christina Rossetti

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.”

EROS, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sense of the world is short,—
Long and various the report,—
              To love and be beloved;
Men and gods have not outlearned it;
And, how oft soe’er they’ve turned it,
             ’Tis not to be improved.

Song of the Open Road, I by Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I         go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

Ode to Psyche, by John Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung          By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung          Even into thine own soft-conched ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see          The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes? I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,          And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side          In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof          Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran                 A brooklet, scarce espied: Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,          Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;          Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;          Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber          At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:                 The winged boy I knew; But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?                 His Psyche true! O latest born and loveliest vision far          Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region’d star,          Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,                 Nor altar heap’d with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan                 Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet          From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat          Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. O brightest! though too late for antique vows,          Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs,          Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retir’d          From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,          Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan                 Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet          From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat          Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane          In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,          Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees          Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,          The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,          With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,          Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight          That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,          To let the warm Love in!