Works

Daylight fades away.
Is the Lord at hand
In the shadows gray
Stealing on the land?

Gently from the east
Come the shadows gray;
But our lowly priest
Nearer is than they.
...

(See Note 47)

Give us, God, to Thee now turning,
Fullness of joy, tears full and burning,
Of will the full refining fire!
Hear our prayer o'er his inurning:
His will was one, the whole discerning,...

Anton Sosnowski, from the Shakspeare School
Where he assists the janitor, sweeps and dusts,
The day now done, sits by a smeared up table
Munching coarse bread and drinking beer; before him...

Over there, above the jetty, stands the mansion of the Vardens,
With a tennis ground and terrace, and a flagstaff in the gardens:
They are gentlemen and ladies, they've been 'toffs' for generations,...

I've painted Shakespeare all my life -
"An infant" (even then at "play"!)
"A boy," with stage-ambition rife,
Then "Married to Ann Hathaway."

"The bard's first ticket night" (or "ben."),...

On one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness

Silence and solitude may hint
(Whose home is in yon piney wood)
What I, though tableted, could never tell--
The din which here befell,...

There's a feast undated yet:
Both our true lives hold it fast,-
The first day we ever met.
What a great day came and passed!
-Unknown then, but known at last.

And we met: You knew not me,...

Now I am dead you sing to me
The songs we used to know,
But while I lived you had no wish
Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me
In the moonlight, comfortless;...

What's that we see from far? the spring of day
Bloom'd from the east, or fair enjewell'd May
Blown out of April, or some new
Star filled with glory to our view,
Reaching at heaven,...

Spring with the lark, most comely bride, and meet
Your eager bridegroom with auspicious feet.
The morn's far spent, and the immortal sun
Corals his cheek to see those rites not done....

A Mother's breast:
Safe refuge from her childish fears,
From childish troubles, childish tears,
Mists that enshroud her dawning years!
see how in sleep she seems to sing
A voiceless psalm, an offering...

The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train
Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.

Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait...

Summer, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt,
Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense.
Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt,...

All of us play our very best game,
Any other time.
Golf or billiards, it's all the same,
Any other time.
Lose a match and you always say,
"Just ny luck! I was 'off' today!...

E'en all religious courses to be rich
Hath been rehers'd by Joel Michelditch:
But now perceiving that it still does please
The sterner fates, to cross his purposes;
He tacks about, and now he doth profess...

I

My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still...

Within my heart I hear the cry
Of loves that suffer, souls that die,
And you may have no praise from me
For warfare's vast vulgarity;
Only the flag of love, unfurled
For peace above a weeping world,...

It's the curiousest thing in creation,
Whenever I hear that old song
"Do They Miss Me at Home," I'm so bothered,
My life seems as short as it's long! -
Fer ev'rything 'pears like adzackly...

I

How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?


II

Her friends are gazing on her,...

Lord of all Life! When my hours are done,
Take me and make me anew -
And give me back to the earth and the sun,
And the sky's unlimited blue.

The nightingale sings in an ecstasy...