Works

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thanket.

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
...

When the shades of eve descending
Throw o'er cloistered courts their gloom,
Dimly with the twilight blending
Memories long forgotten loom.
From the bright fire's falling embers...

No nobler captain ever trod
Than Captain Parklebury Todd,
So good so wise so brave, he!
But still, as all his friends would own,
He had one folly one alone
This Captain in the Navy.
...

PART 1.

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.
...

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,...

Ho! thou who seekest late and long
A License from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and fiendish wrong,
Man of the Pulpit, look!
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,
This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;...

There lies a photograph of you
Deep in a box of broken things.
This was the face I loved and knew
Five years ago, when life had wings;

Five years ago, when through a town...

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime...

The Separated Women
Go lying through the land,
For they have plenty dresses,
And money, too, in hand;
They married brutes and drunkards
And blackguards 'frightful low',
But why are they so eager...

We knew too little of the world,
And you and I were good,
'Twas paltry things that wrecked our lives
As well I knew they would.
The people said our love was dead,
But how were they to know?...

I'm not a chicken; I have seen
Full many a chill September,
And though I was a youngster then,
That gale I well remember;
The day before, my kite-string snapped,
And I, my kite pursuing,...

The seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that...

The midnight is not more bewildering
To her drowsed eyes, than to her ears, the sound
Of dim, sweet singing voices, interwound
With purl of flute and subtle twang of string,...

Innocent dreams be thine! The silver night
Is a fit curtain for thy lovely sleep.
The stars keep watch above thee, and the moon
Sits like a brooding spirit up in Heaven,...

I.

The winds were hushed, and thin and high
The fleecy clouds were drifting,
And through them as she sailed the sky
The moon's soft light was sifting.


II.
...

If slumber, sweet Lisena!
Have stolen o'er thine eyes,
As night steals o'er the glory
Of spring's transparent skies;

Wake, in thy scorn and beauty,
And listen to the strain...

When Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
And Parsons practise what they preach;
Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,...

'E was warned agin' 'er,
That's what made 'im look;
She was warned agin' 'im,
That is why she took.
'Wouldn't 'ear no reason,
'Went an' done it blind;
We know all about 'em,...

Up soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a winged prayer,
As if a soul, released from pain,
Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard; it was to him
An emblem of the Seraphim;...