Works

Whatever the task that comes your way,
Just take it as part of your luck.
Look it right square in the eyes, and say,
'This is MY task, I'll do it to-day':
Don't pass the buck.
...

Some have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow.

Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,...

The wine-loud laughter of indulged Desire
Upon his lips, and, in his eyes, the fire
Of uncontrol, he takes in reckless hands, -
And interrupts with discords, - the sad lyre...

As a weed beneath the ocean,
As a pool beneath a tree
Answers with each breath or motion
An imperious mastery;

So my spirit swift with passion
Finds in every look a sign,...

Were there not a matter known,
There would be no passion.

A maiden wept and, as a comforter,
Came one who cried, "I love thee," and he seized
Her in his arms and kissed her with hot breath,
That dried the tears upon her flaming cheeks....

An Old Colophon

Passion sits on the skull
Of Humanity,
And this infidel enthroned
Laughs shamelessly,

And gaily blows round bubbles
That will fly,
As if to join with worlds...

Choose who will the wiser part,
I have held her heart to heart;

And have felt her heart-strings stirred,
And her soul's still singing heard

For one golden-haloed hour...

My future will not copy fair my past
On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done,
Supernal Will! I would not fain be one
Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast
Upon the fulness of the heart, at last...

Daisies are over Nyren, and Hambledon
Hardly remembers any summer gone:
And never again the Kentish elms shall see
Mynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe.
Nor shall I see them, unless perhaps a ghost...

Now up and down the siding brown
The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur, I know,
Another `milker's' dyin';
The crops have withered from the ground,
The tank's clay bed is glarin',...

'Tis strange to think, there was a time
When mirth was not an empty name,
When laughter really cheered the heart,
And frequent smiles unbidden came,
And tears of grief would only flow...

I.

Dead and gone, the days we had together,
Shadow-stricken all the lights that shone
Round them, flown as flies the blown foam's feather,
Dead and gone.
...

These shell-queens, too,
are blithely catpaws,
shorn & musky acorns with
indexed fingers erect
at manicured attention.

II
... Showboats with green faces far as swallows fly,...

A boat amid the ripples, drifting, rocking,
Two idle people, without pause or aim;
While in the ominous west there gathers darkness
Flushed with flame.

A haycock in a hayfield backing, lapping,...

If it were only still!--
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Moving through the bushes;
Or the soft shock
Of wizened apples falling...

Pastoral Sung To The King

MON. Bad are the times. SIL. And worse than they are we.
MON. Troth, bad are both; worse fruit, and ill the tree:...

Translation from Horace


When he, that shepherd false, 'neath Phrygian sails,
Carried his hostess Helen o'er the seas,
In fitful slumber Nereus hush'd the gales,...

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil...

Here where the coves indent the shore and fall
And fill with ebb and flowing of the tides;
Whereon some barge rocks or some dory rides,
By which old orchards bloom, or, from the wall,...