Works

If ever Thou didst love me, love me now,
When round me beat the flattering vans of life,
Kissing with rapid breath my lifted brow.
Love me, if ever, when the murmur of strife,...

I go through the days
Like a thief.
And no one hears
My heart lament to itself.
Please have pity.
Like me.
I hate you.
I want to embrace you.

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child...

It is easy to sit in the sunshine
And talk to the man in the shade;
It is easy to float in a well-trimmed boat,
And point out the places to wade.

But once we pass into the shadows,...

Wait till the majesty of Death
Invests so mean a brow!
Almost a powdered footman
Might dare to touch it now!

Wait till in everlasting robes
This democrat is dressed,...

The poor man went to the rich man's doors,
"I come as Lazarus came," he said.
The rich man turned with humble head,--
"I will send my dogs to lick your sores!"

Good precepts we must firmly hold,
By daily learning we wax old.

An Incident In Modern History.



My Cherrystones! I prize them,
No tongue can tell how much!
Each lady caller eyes them,
And madly longs to touch!
At eve I lift them down, I look...

I have no children:

But tonight a poem came
in which a small child,
my daughter, appeared at the door
of a half-lit room
where late one night I wrote
at a heavy desk.
...

Predestination is the cause alone
Of many standing, but of fall to none.

The sky is red and comes
from Montreal -
you lied to me
the hemlock of the wind
is not this January's
but is ringed with
steel laughter of
another winter.

I saw you wringing sweat...

"Let such teach others, who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well."

To all to whom this little book may come,
Health for yourselves and those you hold most dear!
Content abroad, and happiness at home,
And, one grand secret in your private ear:,...

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,

except War....

PRAEFATIO


Per quinquennia iam decem,
ni fallor, fuimus: septimus insuper
annum cardo rotat, dum fruimur sole volubili.
Instat terminus et diem
vicinum senio iam Deus adplicat....

Best beloved of ancient stories
Are our Diarmid's woes to me.
Like a mist, by breezes broken,
So this tale of olden glories
Floats in fragments, as a token
Of the song of Ireland's sea.
...

If, and the thing is wildly possible, the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line
...

I step across the mystic border-land,
And look upon the wonder-world of Art.
How beautiful, how beautiful its hills!
And all its valleys, how surpassing fair!
...

I am of opinion that Prefaces are very useless things in cases like the present, where the Author must talk of himself, with little amusement to his readers. I have hesitated whether I should say any thing or nothing; but as it...

Oh could my Mind, unfolded in my page,
Enlighten climes and mould a future age;
There as it glow'd, with noblest frenzy fraught,
Dispense the treasures of exalted thought;...