Works

'Night Speaks'

Grateful is Sleep, my life in stone bound fast;
More grateful still: while wrong and shame shall last,
On me can Time no happier state bestow
Than to be left unconscious of the woe....

Dawn, midnight, noonday? What are times to thee
Man's Grief art thou, that moanest with the light,
And starest dumb at evening, and at night
Dost wake and dream and slumber fitfully!...

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent...

Under an arch of glorious leaves I passed
Out of the wood and saw the sickle moon
Floating in daylight o'er the pale green sea.

It was the quiet hour before the sun...

If this importunate heart trouble your peace
With words lighter than air,
Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;
Crumple the rose in your hair;
And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,...

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,...

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;...

Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul
Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone
And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone
Could draw the face of God, the titan high...

It was just like everything else in life:
Something outside myself drew me down,
My own strength never failed me.
Why, there was the time I earned the money
With which to go away to school,...

A mile-long panto dragon ploddin' 'opeless all the day,
Stuffed out with kits, 'n' spiked with rifles, steamin' in its sweat,
A-heavin' down the misty road, club-footed through the clay,...

When you lie with me and love me,
You give me a second life of young gold;
And when you lie with me and love me not,
I am as one who puts out hands in the dark
And touches cold wet death.
...

The memory of what we've lost
Is with us more than what we've won;
Perhaps because we count the cost
By what we could, yet have not done.

'Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn...

He looks beyond the veils of night and day;
He hearkens in the silence, and has heard
The ancient woods by dryad singing stirred,
To mortal ears how thin and far away....

Mi darlin' Muse, aw coax and pet her,
To pleeas yo, for aw like nowt better;
An' if aw find aw connot get her
To lend her aid,
Into foorced measure then aw set her,
The stupid jade!
...

From the upland hidden,
Where the hill is sunny
Tawny like pure honey
In the August heat,
Memories float unbidden
Where the thicket serries
Fragrant with ripe berries
And the milk-weed sweet....

The sins of Youth are hardly sins,
So frank they are and free.
'T is but when Middle-age begins
We need morality.

Ah, pause and weigh this bitter truth:
That Middle-age, grown cold,...

To M. H.



We passed where flag and flower
Signalled a jocund throng;
We said: "Go to, the hour
Is apt!" and joined the song;
And, kindling, laughed at life and care,...

Lonely wonder, delight past hoping!
Sky-line broken by stirring trees,
Grey rocks hither and shoreward sloping,
Silent bracken about my knees.

Dusky scrub where the sunlight splashes,...

Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.

Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,...

The air is dark and fragrant
With memories of a shower,
And sanctified with stillness
By this most holy hour.

The leaves forget to whisper
Of soft and secret things,
And every bird is silent,...