Works

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,...

(1917)
...

What makes you come HERE fer, Mister,
So much to our house? - SAY?
Come to see our big sister! -
An' Charley he says 'at you kissed her
An' he ketched you, th'uther day! -...

Jerry MacMullen, the millionaire,
Driving a red-meat bus out there -
How did he win his Croix de Guerre?
Bless you, that's all old stuff:
Beast of a night on the Verdun road,...

Fair city by the famed Batrachian Pool,
Wise in the teachings of the Concord School;
Home of the Eurus, paradise of cranks,
Stronghold of thrift, proud in your hundred banks;...

In the prison-house of the dark
I lay with open eyes,
And pale beyond the pale windows
I saw the dawn rise.
From past the bounds of space
Where earthly vapours climb,...

My girl she give me the go onest,
When I was a London lad;
An' I went on the drink for a fortnight,
An' then I went to the bad.
The Queen she give me a shillin'
To fight for 'er over the seas;...

All fly - yet who is misanthrope? -
The actual men and things that pass
Jostling, to wither as the grass
So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,
Or poetry's kaleidoscope,
Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)...

A quite convincing axiom
Is, "Life is like a play";
For, turning back its pages some
Few dog-eared years away,
I find where I
Committed my
Love-tale - with brackets where to sigh.
...

IV.

Probation.


Could I, O Love! obtain a charter clear
To be thy bard, in all thy nights and days,
I would consult the stars, from year to year,...

A long-ear'd beast, and a field-house for cattle,
Among the coals doth often rattle.[1]

A long-ear'd beast, a bird that prates,
The bridegrooms' first gift to their mates,...

Man's are the learnings of his books -
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!

How soil distills the scent in flowers...

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning's flagons up,
And say how many dew;
Tell me how far the morning leaps,
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadths of blue!
...

In His blest name, who was His own creation,
Who from all time makes making his vocation;
The name of Him who makes our faith so bright,
Love, confidence, activity, and might;...

I

I find my mind as it were a deep water.

Sometimes I play with a thought and hammer and bend it,
Till tired and displeased with that I toss it away,
Or absently let it slip to the yawning water:...

Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.

There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;...

NORTH

We come from the gloom of the shadowy trail
Out away on the fringe of the Night,
Where no man could tell, when the darkness fell,
If his eyes would behold the light.
To--the--Night,--...

So she became a bird, and bird-like danced
On a long sloe-bough, treading the silver blossom
With a bird's lovely feet;
And shaken blossoms fell into the hands
Of Sunlight. And he held them for a moment...

Silent yet fiercely the battle is raging;
Blood is not flowing, but poison is spread;
Freedom and slavery madly are waging
A war that will last till its cause shall be dead.
...

I love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
...