Works

What will it please you, my darling, hereafter to be?
Fame upon land will you look for, or glory by sea?
Gallant your life will be always, and all of it free.
...

R. L. Stevenson - The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)


Now there is nothing wrong with me
Except, I think it's called T.B.
And that is why I have to lay
Out in the garden all the day.
...

Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on us all. Amen.

All the bells of heaven may ring,
All the birds of heaven may sing,
All the wells on earth may spring,
All the winds on earth may bring
All sweet sounds together;
Sweeter far than all things heard,...

Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,...

When I sailed out of Baltimore
With twice a thousand head of sheep,
They would not eat, they would not drink,
But bleated o'er the deep.

Inside the pens we crawled each day,...

No sweeter thing than children's ways and wiles,
Surely, we say, can gladden eyes and ears:
Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles
Are even their tears.
...

How low soe'er men rank us,
How high soe'er we win,
The children far above us
Dwell, and they deign to love us,
With lovelier love than ours,
And smiles more sweet than flowers;...

Thou art home at last, my darling one,
Flushed and tired with thy play,
From morning dawn until setting sun
Hast thou been at sport away;
And thy steps are weary - hot thy brow,...

Before an Altar



I wish I were the little key
That locks Love's Captive in,
And lets Him out to go and free
A sinful heart from sin.

I wish I were the little bell...

The Child-World - long and long since lost to view -
A Fairy Paradise! -
How always fair it was and fresh and new -
How every affluent hour heaped heart and eyes
With treasures of surprise!
...

What can lambkins do
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother
The careful ewe.

What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother's wing...

ILIAD, XVIII. 2O2.


So saying, light-foot Iris pass'd away.
Then rose Achilles dear to Zeus; and round
The warrior's puissant shoulders Pallas flung
Her fringed 'gis, and around his head...

Achilles awoke in his ancient tomb
Hard by the coast of Troy;
He rattled his armor now full of dust
And rubbed his eyes like a boy,
As he gazed on the ships of the allied fleet,...

Faith is the spirit that makes man's body and blood
Sacred, to crown when life and death have ceased
His heavenward head for high fame's holy feast;
But as one swordstroke swift as wizard's rod...

They please me not--these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease...

I.

O sunlike Liberty, with eyes of flame,
Mother and maid, immortal, man's delight!
Fairest and first art thou in name and fame
And none shall rob thee of thy vested right....

My Lady clad herself in grey,
That caught and clung about her throat;
Then all the long grey winter day
On me a living splendour smote;
And why grey palmers holy are,...

Over the surging tides and the mountain kingdoms,
Over the pastoral valleys and the meadows,
Over the cities with their factory darkness,
Over the lands where peace is still a power,...

I.
Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,
The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!...