William Ellery Channing Poems

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
...

My highway is unfeatured air,
My consorts are the sleepless stars,
And men my giant arms upbear,
My arms unstained and free from scars.
...

'Here let us live and spend away our lives,'
Said once Fortunio, 'while below, absorbed,
The riotous careering race of man,
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No abbey's gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
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THE SWALLOW is flying over,
But he will not come to me;
He flits, my daring rover,
From land to land, from sea to sea;
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Then spoke the Spirit of the Earth,
Her gentle voice like a soft water's song--
None from my loins have ever birth,
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EDITH, the silent stars are coldly gleaming,
The night wind moans, the leafless trees are still.
Edith, there is a life beyond this seeming,
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I hear thy solemn anthem fall,
O richest song, upon my ear,
That clothes thee in thy golden pall,
As this wide sun flows on the mere.
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Our boat to the waves go free,
By the bending tide, where the curled wave breaks,
Like the track of the wind on the white snowflakes:
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Lady, there is a hope that all men have,
Some mercy for their faults, a grassy place
To rest in, and a flower-strewn, gentle grave;
...