Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | Walton’s Book of Lives | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | From “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” Part III.
THERE are no colors in the fairest sky | |
| So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen | |
| Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men | |
| Dropped from an angel’s wing. With moistened eye | |
| We read of faith and purest charity | 5 |
| In statesman, priest, and humble citizen: | |
| O, could we copy their mild virtues, then | |
| What joy to live, what blessedness to die! | |
| Methinks their very names shine still and bright; | |
| Apart,—like glow-worms on a summer night; | 10 |
| Or lonely tapers when from far they fling | |
| A guiding ray; or seen, like stars on high, | |
| Satellites burning in a lucid ring | |
| Around meek Walton’s heavenly memory. | | | | |
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