Go! you may call it madness, folly;
You shall not chase my gloom away!
There's such a charm in melancholy
I would not if I could be gay.
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite,--a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thoughts supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.
Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour
Have passed away; less happy than the one
That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove
The tender charm of poetry and love.
Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
A charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud.
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
But Hope, the charmer, linger'd still behind.
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties--give me a cigar!
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,
Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
The self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to "the far away."
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat.
What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?
How shall I charm the interval that lowers
Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And, deepening still the dreamlike charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel's whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. 'T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.
And there's a lust in man no charm can tame
Of loudly publishing our neighbour's shame;
On eagles' wings immortal scandals fly,
While virtuous actions are but born and die.
What fairy-like music steals over the sea,
Entrancing our senses with charmed melody?
They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.
Charm is a way of getting a "yes" without having asked any clear question.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.