A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy

Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast As Thou Art--- Not In Lone Splendour Hung Aloft The Night And Watching, With Eternal Lids Apart, Like Nature's Patient, Sleepless Eremite, The Moving Waters At Their Priestlike Task Of Pure Ablution Round Earth's Human Shores, Or Gazing On The New Soft-fallen Mask Of Snow Upon The Mountains And The Moors--- No---yet Still Stedfast, Still Unchangeable, Pillowed Upon My Fair Love's Ripening Breast, To Feel For Ever Its Soft Fall And Swell, Awake For Ever In A Sweet Unrest, Still, Still To Hear Her Tender-taken Breath, And So Live Ever---or Else Swoon In Death.

Talking Of Pleasure, This Moment I Was Writing With One Hand, And With The Other Holding To My Mouth A Nectarine - How Good How Fine. It Went Down All Pulpy, Slushy, Oozy, All Its Delicious Embonpoint Melted Down My Throat Like A Large, Beatified Strawberry.

When I Behold, Upon The Night's Starr'd Face, Huge Cloudy Symbols Of A High Romance, And Think That I May Never Live To Trace Their Shadows, With The Magic Hand Of Chance.

My Passions Are All Asleep From My Having Slumbered Till Nearly Eleven And Weakened The Animal Fiber All Over Me To A Delightful Sensation About Three Degrees On This Sight Of Faintness - If I Had Teeth Of Pearl And The Breath Of Lilies I Should Call It Languor - But As I Am I Must Call It Laziness. In This State Of Effeminacy The Fibers Of The Brain Are Relaxed In Common With The Rest Of The Body, And To Such A Happy Degree That Pleasure Has No Show Of Enticement And Pain No Unbearable Frown. Neither Poetry, Nor Ambition, Nor Love Have Any Alertness Of Countenance As They Pass By Me.

The Thought, The Deadly Thought Of Solitude.