Nay, but I fancy somehow - Robert Louis Stevenson

Nay, but I fancy somehow, year by year
The hard road waxing easier to my feet;
Nay, but I fancy as the season's fleet
I shall grow ever dearer to my dear.
Hope is so strong that it has conquered fear;
Love follows, crowned and glad for fear's defeat.
Down the long future I behold us, sweet,
Pass, and grow ever dearer and more near,
Pass and go onward into the mild land
Where the blond harvests slumber all the noon,
And the pale sky bends downward to the sea;
Pass, and go forward, ever hand in hand,
Till all the plain be quickened with the moon,
And the lit windows beckon o'er the lea.

In the Valley of the Elwy - Gerard Manley Hopkins

In the Valley of the Elwy

I remember a house where all were good

   To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:

   Comforting smell breathed at very entering,

Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.

That cordial air made those kind people a hood

   All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing

   Will, or mild nights the new morsels of Spring:

Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,

All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;

   Only the inmate does not correspond:

God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,

Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,

   Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.

Monna Innominata I - Christina Rossetti

In this cycle of sonnets, Christina Rossetti aimed to give voice to the idealized woman addressed by Italian Renaissance poets such as Petrarch and Dante -- thus, the quotations at the beginning.

Monna Innominata I

Lo dì che han detto a' dolci amici addio. - Dante
Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci! - Petrarca

Come back to me, who wait and watch for you:--
Or come not yet, for it is over then,
And long it is before you come again,
So far between my pleasures are and few.
While, when you come not, what I do I do
Thinking "Now when he comes," my sweetest "when:"
For one man is my world of all the men
This wide world holds; O love, my world is you.
Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang
Because the pang of parting comes so soon;
My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon
Between the heavenly days on which we meet:
Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
When life was sweet because you called them sweet?

The Mower to the Glowworms - Andrew Marvell

The Mower to the Glowworms

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer-night
Her matchless songs does meditate,

Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor princes funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses' fall;

Ye glowworms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home.

Alas! so all things now do hold their peace - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Note: the word "chare" apparently refers to the constellation Ursa Major.


Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbèd in no thing.
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease;
The nightès chare the stars about doth bring;
Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less.
So am not I, whom love, alas, doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease:
For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring,
But by and by the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

Jonah's Song [from Moby-Dick] - Herman Melville

Jonah's Song [from Moby-Dick]

The ribs and terrors in the whale,
    Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
    And lift me deepening down to doom.

I saw the opening maw of hell,
    With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell–
    Oh, I was plunging to despair.

In black distress, I called my God,
    When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints–
    No more the whale did me confine.

With speed he flew to my relief,
    As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
    The face of my Deliverer God.

My song for ever shall record
    That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
    His all the mercy and the power.

Sonnet 2 - Sir Philip Sidney

I really like this one.  It's one of Sidney's favorite poetical tricks to describe this sort of "logical" progression from step to step; there's less of passion than of order to his love here, as he talks about how he gradually lost his heart -- and his sense -- through his lady's charms.  Eventually, even his art becomes her servant, as he uses it for self-deception in her favor. 

Sonnet 2

Not at the first sight, nor with a dribbed shot,

Love gave the wound, which, while I breathe, will bleed;

But known worth did in mine of time proceed,

Till by degrees it had full conquest got.

I saw and liked; I liked but loved not;

I loved, but straight did not what love decreed;

At length to love's decrees I, forced, agreed,

Yet with repining at so partial lot.

Now even that footstep of lost liberty

Is gone, and now, like slave-born Muscovite,

I call it praise to suffer tyranny;

And now employ the remnant of my wit

To make myself believe that all is well,

While, with a feeling skill, I paint my hell.

War Books - Ivor Gurney

War Books

What did they expect of our toil and extreme
Hunger - the perfect drawing of a heart's dream?
Did they look for a book of wrought art's perfection,
Who promised no reading, nor praise, nor publication?
Out of the heart's sickness the spirit wrote
For delight, or to escape hunger, or of war's worst anger,
When the guns died to silence and men would gather sense
Somehow together, and find this was life indeed,
And praise another's nobleness, or to Cotswold get hence.
There we wrote - Corbie Ridge - or in Gonnehem at rest -
Or Fauquissart - our world's death songs, ever the best.
One made sorrow's praise passing the church where silence
Opened for the long quivering strokes of the bell -
Another wrote all soldiers' praise, and of France and night's stars,
Served his guns, got immortality, and died well.
But Ypres played another trick with its danger on me,
Kept still the needing and loving-of-action body,
Gave no candles, and nearly killed me twice as well,
And no souvenirs, though I risked my life in the stuck tanks.
Yet there was praise of Ypres, love came sweet in hospital,
And old Flanders went under to long ages of plays' thought in my pages.