Works

A still small voice spake unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'

Then to the still small voice I said;
'Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.'...

I.

A plague upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low;
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,...

'Ouse-keeper sent tha my lass, fur New Squire coom'd last night.
Butter an' heggs'yis'yis. I'll go' wi' tha back: all right;
Butter I warrants be prime, an' I warrants the heggs be as well,...

I.

I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down....

I.

The voice and the Peak
Far over summit and lawn,
The lone glow and long roar
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn!



II.

All night have I heard the voice...

I.
We left behind the painted buoy
That tosses at the harbor-mouth;
And madly danced our hearts with joy,
As fast we fleeted to the South:
How fresh was every sight and sound...

I.
I WAS the chief of the race'he had stricken my father dead'
But I gather'd my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look'd like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,...

Soft, shadowy moon-beam! by the light
Sleeps the wide meer serenely pale:
How various are the sounds of night,
Borne on the scarely-rising gale!

The swell of distant brook is heard,...

The gleam of household sunshine ends,
And here no longer can I rest;
Farewell! - You will not speak, my friends,
Unfriendly of your parted guest.

O well for him that finds a friend,...

ON THE HILL.

The lights and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's eye!
Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her window pane,...

Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong'd to the church of old,
I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold,
I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves,...

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek...

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality...

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS


'Cursed be he that moves my bones.'

Shakespeare's Epitaph.



You might have won the Poet's name,
If such be worth the winning now,...

Golden-hair'd Ally whose name is one with mine,
Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new wine,
Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine,
O little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine,...

King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and grown
In power, and ever growest, since thine own
Fair Florence honouring thy nativity,
Thy Florence now the crown of Italy,...

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit...

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Pene'an pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,...

Two Suns of Love make day of human life,
Which else with all its pains, and griefs, and deaths,
Were utter darkness'one, the Sun of dawn
That brightens thro' the Mother's tender eyes,...

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made,...