Works

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!
...

Not mine to let the hair grow long, and talk
In raptured accents of the Higher Things,
Of all the purple Polyanthus bears,
And beating wings.
(Oh no! Nothing of that sort!)
...

(Written on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral)

The Queen is taking a drive to-day,
They have hung with purple the carriage-way,
They have dressed with purple the royal track...

Midnight June 30 1879

I.

Midnight'in no midsummer tune
The breakers lash the shores:
The cuckoo of a joyless June
Is calling out of doors:

And thou hast vanish'd from thine own...

Those that of late had fleeted far and fast
To touch all shores, now leaving to the skill
Of others their old craft seaworthy still,
Have charter'd this; where, mindful of the past,...

I

I purposed once to take my pen and write,
Not songs, like some, tormented and awry
With passion, but a cunning harmony
Of words and music caught from glen and height,...

Thoughts, that have tarried in my mind, and peopled its inner chambers,
The sober children of reason, or desultory train of fancy;
Clear-running wine of conviction, with the scum and the lees of speculation;...

Not in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion?
This, thy tenderness for me?...

If in opinion of iudiciall wit,
Primaleons sweet Invention well deserue:
Then he (no lesse) which hath translated it,
Which doth his sense, his forme, his phrase, obserue....

Chapman; We finde by thy past-prized fraught,
What wealth thou dost vpon this Land conferre;
Th'olde Grecian Prophets hither that hast brought,
Of their full words the true interpreter:...

Like as a man, on some aduenture bound
His honest friendes, their kindnes to expresse,
T'incourage him of whome the maine is own'd;
Some venture more, and some aduenture lesse,...

Such men as hold intelligence with Letters,
And in that nice and Narrow way of Verse,
As oft they lend, so oft they must be Debters,
If with the Muses they will haue commerce:...

In new attire (and put most neatly on)
Thou Murray mak'st thy passionate Queene apeare,
As when she sat on the Numidian throne,
Deck'd with those Gems that most refulgent were....

Driue forth thy Flocke, young Pastor, to that Plaine,
Where our old Shepheards wont their flocks to feed;
To those cleare walkes, where many a skilfull Swaine
To'ards the calme eu'ning, tun'd his pleasant Reede,...

A man sat on a rock and sought
Refreshment from his thumb;
A dinotherium wandered by
And scared him some.

His name was Smith. The kind of rock
He sat upon was shale....

A terror both of gods and men
Was Heerun Kasyapu, the king;
No bear more sullen in its den,
No tiger quicker at the spring.
In strength of limb he had not met,
Since first his black flag he unfurled,...

I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
In deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share...

Poems are heavenly things,
And only souls with wings
May reach them where they grow,
May pluck and bear below,
Feeding the nations thus
With food all glorious.

Verses are not of these;...

Alas! upon some starry height,
The Gods of Excellence to please,
This hand of mine will never smite
The Harp of High Serenities.
Mere minstrel of the street am I,
To whom a careless coin you fling;...

Oh, be not led away,
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
The gay romance of song
Unto the spirit life doth not belong:
Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic powers...