Works

(See Note 8)

... Oceanward I am ever yearning,
Where far it rolls in its calm and grandeur,
The weight of mountain-like fogbanks bearing,
Forever wandering and returning....

In a land beyond sight or conceiving,
In a land where no blight is, no wrong,
No darkness, no graves, and no grieving,
There lies the great ocean of song.
And its waves, oh, its waves unbeholden...

("Nous nous promenions ' Rozel-Tower.")

[Bk. VI. iv., October, 1852.]


We walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory...

O singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state;
O Singer of Persephone!
...

POET.
My haunting grief has vanished like a dream,
Its floating fading memory seems one
With those frail mists born of the dawn's first beam,
Dissolving as the dew melts in the sun.


MUSE....

The ways of Providence are odd.
If THEODORE means "The Gift of God,"
Let us give thanks, at any rate,
The Gift was not a duplicate.


Aside (To T. R)
...

As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
On the shore of the turbid Spoon
With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,
Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,...

Me and Ed and a stretcher
Out on the nootral ground.
(If there's one dead corpse, I'll betcher
There's a 'undred smellin' around.)
Me and Eddie O'Brian,
Both of the R. A. M. C....

O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale!
Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind,
Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind
Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,
...

(Lyra Eucharistica, 1863.)


Once I thought to sit so high
In the Palace of the sky;
Now, I thank God for His Grace,
If I may fill the lowest place.

Once I thought to scale so soon...

'Tis moonlight on Trebarwith Vale,
And moonlight on an Ogre keen,
Who prowling hungry through the dale
A lone cottage hath seen.

Small with thin smoke ascending up
Three casements and a door: -...

Here on this jutting headland, where the trees
Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast
And count his golden guineas on, we'll stay;
For hence is the best prospect of the Falls,...

i(A certain poet in outlandish clothes)
i(Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,)
i(Talked1 of his country and its people, sang)
i(To some stringed instrument none there had seen,)...

Scorn not the Old; 'twas sacred in its day,
A truth overpowering error with its might,
A light dispelling darkness with its ray,
A victory won, an intermediate height,...

("L'homme auquel on vous destina.")

[HERNANI, Act I.]


Listen. The man for whom your youth is destined,
Your uncle, Ruy de Silva, is the Duke
Of Pastrana, Count of Castile and Aragon....

There's a memory keeps a-runnin'
Through my weary head to-night,
An' I see a picture dancin'
In the fire-flames' ruddy light;
'Tis the picture of an orchard
Wrapped in autumn's purple haze,...

Thou beautiful Ash! thou art lowly laid,
And my eyes shall hail no more
From afar thy cool and refreshing shade,
When the toilsome journey's o'er.
The winged and the wandering tribes of air...

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze...

It was an humble cottage,
Snug in a rustic lane,
Geraniums and fuschias peep'd
From every window-pane;

The dark-leaved ivy dressed its walls,
Houseleek adorned the thatch;...

The Old Bad Woman was coming along,
Busily humming a sort of song.

You could barely see, below her bonnet,
Her chin where her long nose rested on it.

One tooth thrust out on her lower lip,...