Works

The wan sun westers, faint and slow;
The eastern distance glimmers gray;
An eerie haze comes creeping low
Across the little, lonely bay;
And from the sky-line far away
About the quiet heaven are spread...

It watched me in the cradle laid, and from my boyhood's home
It glared above my shoulder-blade when I wrote my first 'pome';
It's sidled by me ever since, with greeny eyes aslant,...

Young Chloe looks sweet as the rose,
And her love might be reckoned no less,
But her bosom so freely bestows
That all may a portion possess.
Her smiles would be cheering to see,...

I.
Yonder, with eyes that tears, not distance, dim,
With ears the wide world's thickness cannot daunt,
We see tumultuous miseries that haunt
The night's dead watches, hear the battle hymn...

A mist was driving down the British Channel,
The day was just begun,
And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,
Streamed the red autumn sun.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon,...

Wargeilah town is very small,
There's no cathedral nor a club,
In fact the township, all in all,
Is just one unpretentious pub;
And there, from all the stations round,
The local sportsmen can be found....

Who are the Makers of Wars?
The Kings of the earth.

And who are these Kings of the earth?
Only men--not always even men of worth,
But claiming rule by right of birth.
...

Every man worth the name
has a yellow snake in his soul,
seated as on a throne, saying
if he cries: 'I want to!': 'No!'


Lock eyes with the fixed gaze
of Nixies or Satyresses, says...

Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind...

When sounds the trumpet at the Judgment Day,

And when forever all things earthly die,

We must a full and true account supply
Of ev'ry useless word we dropp'd in play.
...

When the eye whose kind beam was the beacon of gladness
From the glance of a lover turns coldly away,
O'er the bright sun of hope float the dark clouds of sadness,
And youth's lovely visions recede with the ray....

Far back within an age remote,
Which common history fails to note,
When dogs could talk, and pigs could sing,
And frogs obeyed a wooden king,
There lived a tribe of rats so mean,...

The Warrigal's lair is pent in bare,
Black rocks at the gorge's mouth;
It is set in ways where Summer strays
With the sprites of flame and drouth;
But when the heights are touched with lights...

He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days,
But with the night his little lamp-lit room
Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze
Of smoke that stung his eyes he heard the boom...

Long since, in sore distress, I heard one pray,
"Lord, who prevailest with resistless might,
Ever from war and strife keep me away,
My battles fight!"

I know not if I play the Pharisee,...

Bowmen, shout for Gamelbar!
Winds, unthrottle the wolves of war!
Heave a breath
And dare a death
For the doom of Gamelbar!
Wealth for Gamel,
Wine for Gamel,
Crimson wine for Gamelbar!
...

"By the splendor of God!" was a characteristic oath of William the Conqueror.


By the splendor of God! We come! We come!
To fight to the death for Old England's crown,...

I.

Black-veiled, black-gowned, she rides in bus and train,
With eyes that fill too listlessly for tears.
Her waxen hands clasp and unclasp again.
Good News, they cry. She neither sees nor hears.
...

Certain events, like architects, build up
Viewless cathedrals, in whose aisles the cup
Of some impressive sacrament is kist -
Where thankful nations taste the Eucharist....

The two proud sisters of the sea,
In glory and in doom! -
Well may the eternal waters be
Their broad, unsculptured tomb!
The wind that rings along the wave,
The clear, unshadowed sun,...