From The Same (Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.)

Where were ye, nymphs, when Daphnis drooped with love?
In fair Peneus' Tempe, or the grove
Of Pindus! Nor your pastimes did ye keep,
Where huge Anapus' torrent waters sweep;
On Ætna's height, ah! impotent to save,
Nor yet where Akis winds his holy wave!

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

The Dying Slave

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

The Blacksmith. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

On Entering Switzerland

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

The Hour-Glass. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

From The Same (Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.)

Pan, Pan, oh mighty hunter! whether now,
Thou roamest o'er Lyceus' shaggy brow,
Or Moenalaus, outstretched in amplest shade,
Thy solitary footsteps have delayed;
Leave Helice's romantic rock a while,
And haste, oh haste, to the Sicilian isle;
Leave the dread monument, approached with fear,
That Lycaonian tomb the gods revere.
Here cease, Sicilian Muse, the Doric lay;
Come, Forest King, and bear this pipe away;
Daphnis, subdued by love, and bowed with woe,
Sinks, sinks for ever to the shades below.

William Lisle Bowles

From The Same Idyl (Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.)

Mark, where the beetling precipice appears,
The toil of the old fisher, gray with years;
Mark, as to drag the laden net he strains,
The labouring muscle and the swelling veins!
There, in the sun, the clustered vineyard bends,
And shines empurpled, as the morn ascends!
A little boy, with idly-happy mien,
To guard the grapes upon the ground is seen;
Two wily foxes creeping round appear,
The scrip that holds his morning meal is near,
One breaks the bending vines; with longing lip,
And look askance, one eyes the tempting scrip.
He plats and plats his rushy net all day,
And makes the vagrant grasshopper his prey;
He plats his net, intent with idle care,
Nor heeds how vineyard, grape, or scrip may fare.

William Lisle Bowles

From Idyl VII (Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.)

He left us; we, the hour of parting come,
To Prasidamus' hospitable home,
Myself and Eucritus, together wend,
With young Amynticus, our blooming friend:
There, all delighted, through the summer day,
On beds of rushes, pillowed deep, we lay;
Around, the lentils, newly cut, were spread;
Dark elms and poplars whispered o'er our head;
A hallowed stream, to all the wood-nymphs dear,
Fresh from the rocky cavern murmured near;
Beneath the fruit-leaves' many-mantling shade,
The grasshoppers a coil incessant made;
From the wild thorny thickets, heard remote,
The wood-lark trilled his far-resounding note;
Loud sung the thrush, musician of the scene,
And soft and sweet was heard the dove's sad note between;
Then yellow bees, whose murmur soothed the ear,
Went idly f...

William Lisle Bowles

Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.

[Greek: Ady ti to psthyrisma], etc.

Goat-herd, how sweet above the lucid spring
The high pines wave with breezy murmuring!
So sweet thy song, whose music might succeed
To the wild melodies of Pan's own reed.

William Lisle Bowles

Thyrsis

More sweet thy pipe's enchanting melody
Than streams that fall from broken rocks on high.
Say, by the nymphs, that guard the sacred scene,
Where lowly tamarisks shade these hillocks green,
At noontide shall we lie?
No; for o'erwearied with the forest chase,
Pan, the great hunter god, sleeps in this place.
Beneath the branching elm, while thy sad verse,
O Thyrsis! Daphnis' sorrows shall rehearse,
Fronting the wood-nymph's solitary seat,
Whose fountains flash amid the dark retreat;
Where the old statue leans, and brown oaks wave
Their ancient umbrage o'er the pastoral cave;
There will we rest, and thou, as erst, prolong
The sweet enchantment of the Doric song!

William Lisle Bowles

To The Same

(Ode to Lycoris. May 1817)

Enough of climbing toil! Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
Mount toward the empire of the fickle clouds,
Each weary step, dwarfing the world below,
Induces, for its old familiar sights,
Unacceptable feelings of contempt,
With wonder mixed, that Man could e'er be tied,
In anxious bondage, to such nice array
And formal fellowship of petty things!
Oh! 'tis the 'heart' that magnifies this life,
Making a truth and beauty of her own;
And moss-grown alleys, circumscribing shades,
And gurgling rills, assist her in the work
More efficaciously than realms outspread,
As in a map, before the adventurer's gaze,
Ocean an...

William Wordsworth