Dull to myself and almost dead to these

I am part of all that I have met.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,

Like coarsest clothes against the cold;

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

By Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these

My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;

Lost to all music now, since everything

Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.

Sick is the land to th’ heart, and doth endure

More dangerous faintings by her desp’rate cure.

But if that golden age would come again

And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;

If smooth and unperplex’d the seasons were

As when the sweet Maria lived here;

I should delight to have my curls half drown’d

In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown’d.

And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)

Knock at a star with my exalted head.

Tag: Dull to myself and almost dead to these