The Leaf by Antoine-Vincent Arnault

Thou poor leaf, so sear and frail,
Sport of every wanton gale,
Whence, and whither, dost thou fly
Through this bleak autumnal sky!’
‘On a noble oak I grew,
Green, and broad, and fair to view;
But the Monarch of the shade
By the tempest low was laid.
From that time, I wander o’er
Wood, and valley, hill, and moor;
Wheresoe’er the wind is blowing,
Nothing caring, nothing knowing.
Thither go I, whither goes
Glory’s laurel, Beauty’s rose.

From: https://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2010/01/travels-of-leaf.html?m=1

Date: 1812 (original in French); 1826 (translation in English)

By: Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766-1834)

Translated by: Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Sonnet III. Written at Midnight, on Helm-Crag by John Wilson

Go up among the mountains, when the storm
Of midnight howls, but go in that wild mood,
When the soul loves tumultuous solitude,
And through the haunted air, each giant form
Of swinging pine, black rock, or ghostly cloud,
That veils some fearful cataract tumbling loud,
Seems to thy breathless heart with life embued.
‘Mid those gaunt, shapeless things thou art alone!
The mind exists, thinks, trembles through the ear,
The memory of the human world is gone,
And time and space seem living only here.
Oh! worship thou the visions then made known,
While sable glooms round Nature’s temple roll,
And her dread anthem peals into thy soul.

From: Wilson, John, The Isle of Palms, and Other Poems, 1812, John Ballantyne and Company: Edinburgh, p. 390.
(http://books.google.com.au/books?pg=PA390)

Date: 1812

By: John Wilson (1785-1854)

Nocturne by Gerald Griffin

Sleep that like the couched dove
Broods o’er the weary eye,
Dreams that with soft heavings move
The heart of memory,
Labor’s guerdon, golden rest,
Wrap thee in its downy vest, –
Fall like comfort on thy brain
And sing the hush song to thy pain!

Far from thee be startling fears,
And dreams the guilty dream;
No banshee scare thy drowsy ears
With her ill-omen’d scream;
But tones of fairy minstrelsy
Float like the ghosts of sound o’er thee,
Soft as the chapel’s distant bell,
And lull thee to a sweet farewell.

Ye for whom the ashy hearth
The fearful housewife clears,
Ye whose tiny sounds of mirth
The nighted carman hears,
Ye whose pygmy hammers make
The wonderers of the cottage wake,
Noiseless be your airy flight,
Silent as the still moonlight.

Silent go, and harmless come,
Fairies of the stream:
Ye, who love the winter gloom
Or the gay moonbeam,
Hither bring your drowsy store
Gather’d from the bright lusmore;
Shake o’er temples, soft and deep,
The comfort of the poor man, sleep.

From: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nocturne-32/

Date: 1812

By: Gerald Griffin (1803-1840)