Bible to Renaissance
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Psalm 23
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
“The Lamb” by William Blake
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
“The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
"The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.
The Song of Solomon 8
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
“Love (III)” by George Herbert
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did __________
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind,
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading,
“Vigil Strange Kept I on the Field One Night” by Walt Whitman
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.
“The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd” by
Walter Raleigh
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
"Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” by
Robert Browning
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
And in that hall there was a bed,
It was hangèd with gold so red.
“The Corpus Christi Carol”
Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,
“To Penshurst” by Ben Jonson
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
“The Sick Rose” by William Blake
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
He cam also stylle
There his moder lay
“I Sing of a Maiden”
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc’d fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
“Lycidas” by Milton
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
“One Art” by ELIZABETH BISHOP