Works

'Twas the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that faced the sea....

"I hear the piano playing
Just as a ghost might play."
" O, but what are you saying?
There's no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
Years past it went amiss."...

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound,...

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk,
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
...

In the nook of a wood where a pool freshed with dew
Glassed, daybreak till evening, blue sky glimpsing through
Then a star; or a slip of May-moon silver-white,
Thridding softly aloof the quiet of night,...

Never am I so alone
As when I walk among the crowd -
Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone,
Unmeaning eyes and voices loud.

Gaze dares not encounter gaze, ...
Humbled, I turn my head aside;...

Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?
"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."
Your friends, then?...

When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?
No, rather smile away despair;
For those have been more sad than I,
With burthens more than I could bear;
Aye, gone rejoicing under care...

Come list, while I tell of the heart-wounded Stranger
Who sleeps her last slumber in this haunted ground;
Where often, at midnight, the lonely wood-ranger
Hears soft fairy music re-echo around.
...

"Now what is that, my daughter dear, upon thy cheek so fair?"
"'Tis but a kiss, my mother dear - kind fortune sent it there.
It was a courteous stranger-man that gave it unto me,...

The strangest things and the maddest things, that a man can do or say,
To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day;...

O my trade it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all -
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take 'em up on high,
And waft 'em to a far countree!

My tools are but common ones,...

Way up at the top of a big stack of straw
Was the cunningest parlor that ever you saw!
And there could you lie when aweary of play
And gossip or laze in the coziest way;...

Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,...

We had finished our pitiful morsel,
And both sat in silence a while;
At length we looked up at each other.
And I said, with the ghost of a smile, -
"Only two little potatoes...

O stream descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flow'rets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,...

Oh silvery streamlet of the fields,
That flowest full and free!
For thee the rains of spring return,
The summer dews for thee;
And when thy latest blossoms die
In autumn's chilly showers,...

The shopping had been tedious, and the rain
Came pelting down as she turned home again.

The motor-bus swirled past with rush and whirr,
Nought but its fumes of petrol left for her.
...

Marlboro' and Waterloo and Trafalgar,
Tuileries, Talavera, Valenciennes,
Were strange names all, and all familiar;

For down their streets I went, early and late...

(What the Mendicant Said)


The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.

They turn to stars or shadows,...