All that I know 
Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 
(Like the angled spar) 
Now a dart of red, 
Now a dart of blue; 
Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue! 
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

Robert Browning

Lo! where the Moon along the sky
Sails with her happy destiny;
Oft is she hid from mortal eye
Or dimly seen,
But when the clouds asunder fly
How bright her mien!

Far different we—a froward race,
Thousands though rich in Fortune’s grace
With cherished sullenness of pace
Their way pursue, 
Ingrates who wear a smileless face
The whole year through.

If kindred humours e’er would make
My spirit droop for drooping’s sake,
From Fancy following in thy wake,
Bright ship of heaven!
A counter impulse let me take
And be forgiven. 

William Wordsworth

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
     Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods and men and beasts have birth,
     Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

If with mists of evening dew
     Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow in scent and hue
     Fairest children of the Hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tom Hiddleston reads Bright Star by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast 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 stedfast, 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. 

I’ve decided to include audio posts on this blog. That is, readings of Romantic poetry. Because I tend to find them, save them in my likes, and then forget about them forever. Now they’ll go here, for your listening pleasure. I’m starting off with Mr. Tom Hiddleston reading Keats, because it’d be genuinely hard to find a better combination.

The author page is up! It’s “poet list” on the right side with my other links. PLEASE message me to let me know if a link doesn’t work. And, as usual, if there’s anything else you think this blog needs, let me know!

Love, M.

Full of wickedness, I—of many a smutch’d deed reminiscent—of
     worse deeds capable,
Yet I look composedly upon nature, drink day and night the joys
     of life, and await death with perfect equanimity,
Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love and
     because of his boundless love for me.

Walt Whitman

Like, with every poet whose work I’ve posted on this blog? I’ve been considering it. What do you all think?

Also, any other suggestions are welcome. 

The great work laid upon his twoscore years
Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
With him whose life stands rounded and approved
In the full growth and stature of a man.
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down,
From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
No more forever!—has he lived in vain
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told
Your bridal service from his lips of gold?

John Greenleaf Whittier

My soul towards your brow, where, O calm sister,
An autumn dreams blotched by reddish smudges,
And towards the errant sky of your angelic eye
Climbs: as in a melancholy garden the true sigh
Of a white jet of water towards the Azure!
–To the Azure that October stirred, pale, pure,
That in the vast pools mirrors infinite languor,
And over dead water where the leaves wander
The wind, in russet throes dig their cold furrow,
Allows a long ray of yellow light to flow.

Stéphane Mallarmé