Impromptu - To Kate Carol

When from your gems of thought I turn
To those pure orbs, your heart to learn,
I scarce know which to prize most high,
The bright i-dea, or the bright dear-eye.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic, best known for his poems and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole. His work initiated the modern detective story genre and contributed significantly to the emerging science fiction genre. Poe's most famous works include 'The Raven,' 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' and 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'

Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe, Simple Poetry

Stanzas

Edgar Allan Poe, Simple Poetry

In Youth I Have Known One

Edgar Allan Poe, Simple Poetry

Eulalie

Edgar Allan Poe, Simple Poetry

English

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Impromptu.

You say you're glad I write - oh, say not so!
    My fount of song, dear friend, 's a bitter well;
And when the numbers freely from it flow,
    'Tis that my heart, and eyes, o'erflow as well.

Castalia, fam'd of yore, - the spring divine,
    Apollo's smile upon its current wears:
Moore and Anacreon, found its waves were wine,
    To me, it flows a sullen stream of tears.

Frances Anne Kemble

Impromptu, To Miss Ainslie.

    Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
        Nor idle texts pursue:-
    'Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
        Not angels such as you!

Robert Burns

Impromptu. After A Visit To Mrs. ----, Of Montreal.

'Twas but for a moment--and yet in that time
    She crowded the impressions of many an hour:
Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime,
    Which waked every feeling at once into flower.

Oh! could we have borrowed from Time but a day,
    To renew such impressions again and again,
The things we should look and imagine and say
    Would be worth all the life we had wasted till then.

What we had not the leisure or language to speak,
    We should find some more spiritual mode of revealing,
And, between us, should feel just as much in a week
    As others would take a millennium in feeling.

Thomas Moore

Impromptu

"Where art thou wandering, little child?"
I said to one I met to-day.--
She pushed her bonnet up and smiled,
"I'm going upon the green to play:
Folks tell me that the May's in flower,
That cowslip-peeps are fit to pull,
And I've got leave to spend an hour
To get this little basket full."

--And thou'st got leave to spend an hour!
My heart repeated.--She was gone;
--And thou hast heard the thorn's in flower,
And childhood's bliss is urging on:
Ah, happy child! thou mak'st me sigh,
This once as happy heart of mine,
Would nature with the boon comply,
How gladly would I change for thine.

John Clare

Impromptu.

"Where art thou wandering, little child?"
I said to one I met to-day--
She push'd her bonnet up and smil'd,
"I'm going upon the green to play:
Folks tell me that the May's in flower,
That cowslip-peeps are fit to pull,
And I've got leave to spend an hour
To get this little basket full."

--And thou'st got leave to spend an hour !
My heart repeated--she was gone;
--And thou hast heard the thorn's in flower,
And childhood bliss is urging on:
Ah, happy child! thou mak'st me sigh,
This once as happy heart of mine,
Would nature with the boon comply,
How gladly would I change for thine.

John Clare

To Marie Louise (Shew).

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words"--denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words--two foreign soft dissyllables--
Italian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"--
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,")
Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy...

Edgar Allan Poe