I

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears.

CXCI

Lord Byron

HAPPY INSENSIBILITY

Na drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy Tree

Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity;

The north cannot undo them

With a sleety whistle through them, Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy Brook
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look ;

But with a sweet forgetting

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah would 't were so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any
Writhed not at passéd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it

Nor numbéd sense to steal it

Was never said in rhyme.

7. Keats

CXCII

WHERE shall the lover rest

WHER

Whom the fates sever

From his true maiden's breast

Parted for ever?

Where, through groves deep and high

Sounds the far billow, Where early violets die

Under the willow.

Eleu loro

Soft shall be his pillow.

There, through the summer day
Cool streams are laving:
There, while the tempests sway,

Scarce are boughs waving;
There thy rest shalt thou take,

Parted for ever, Never again to wake

Never, O never!

Eleu loro

Never, O never!

Where shall the traitor rest,

He, the deceiver,

Who could win maiden's breast,

Ruin, and leave her?

In the lost battle,

Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle

With groans of the dying;

Eleu loro

There shall he be lying.

Her wing shall the eagle flap
O'er the false-hearted;

His warm blood the wolf shall lap
Ere life be parted:
Shame and dishonour sit

By his grave ever;
Blessing shall hallow it

Never, O never!

Eleu loro

Never, O never!

Sir W. Scott

CXCIII

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

'I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.'

'I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful- a fairy's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

'I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan,

'I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.

'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said "I love thee true.

'She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

'And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream'd- Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill's side.

'I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried "La belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!"

'I saw their starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapéd wide,

And I awoke and found me here

On the cold hill's side.