Works

I asked to see the dead man's face,
As I gave the servant my well-filled basket;
And she deigned to lead me, a wondrous grace,
Where he lay asleep in his rosewood casket....

See in the babe two loveliest flowers united yet in truth,
While in the bud they seem the same the virgin and the youth!
But loosened is the gentle bond, no longer side by side...

Darker than night; and oh, much darker, she,
Whose eyes in deep night darkness gaze on me.
No stars surround her; yet the moon seems hid
Afar somewhere, beneath that narrow lid....

I saw him as he went
With merry voice and eye.

I met him when he came
Back, tired but the same--
The same clear voice, bright eye,
Merry laugh, quick reply.

And now, if I but look...

I

Mother, mother, what is that gazing through the darkness?
What is that that looks at me with its awful eyes?
Tell me, mother, what it is, freezing me to starkness?...

I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied,
Upon a stone that was not rolled aside,
A Shadow sit upon a grave, a Shade,
As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old
Came, the Greek poet told,...

Shapeless and grim,
A Shadow dim
O'erhung the ways,
And darkened all my days.
And all who saw,
With bated breath,
Said, "It is Death!"

And I, in weakness
Slipping towards the Night,...

Get you away! Is not the rose at flow'r?
And list that song! The bird is in the sky!
Ah, foolish one, I know your final hour,
I know the very place where you shall lie.
...

The fourteen centuries fall away
Between us and the Afric saint,
And at his side we urge, to-day,
The immemorial quest and old complaint.

No outward sign to us is given,...

Don't you know the sailing orders?
It is time to put to sea,
And the stranger in the harbor
Sends a boat ashore for me.

With the thunder of her canvas
Coming on the wind again,...

There's a funny little kitten that tries to look like me,
But though I'm round and fluffy, he's as flat as flat can be;
And when I try to mew to him he never makes a sound,...

There's a face that beclouds like a shadow my pathway at morn and eve,
There's a form that glides before me which my eyes can never leave,
When I pore above the hearth and heavy thoughts my bosom fill,...

The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
Of the old, unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours -...

The Rev Mr Young was one stormy day visiting one of his people, an old man, who lived in great poverty in a lonely cottage a few miles from Jedsburg. He found him sitting with his Bible open upon his knees, but in outward circu...

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,

An angel mused: "Is there good or ill
In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
...

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,

An angel mused: "Is there good or ill
In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
...

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,...

My little boy, with smooth, fair cheeks,
And dreamy, large, brown eyes,
Not often, little wisehead, speaks,
But hearing, weighs and tries.

"God is not only in the sky,"
His sister said one day--...

"How many have gone?" was the question of old
Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels bereft;
Alas! for too often the death-bell has tolled,
And the question we ask is, "How many are left?"
...

Silence comes upon the night,
Gone is all the cheerful day,
The moon has disappeared from sight,
Every star has gone away.

Sinking through the void, and thence
Disappearing, star and sky,...