Works

Rare-sweet the air in that unimagined country -
My spirit had wandered far
From its weary body close-enwrapt in slumber
Where its home and earth-friends are;
A milk-like air - and of light all abundance;...

One silent night of late,
When every creature rested,
Came one unto my gate,
And knocking, me molested.

Who's that, said I, beats there,
And troubles thus the sleepy?...

To the Wolf, from whose throat Dr Crane
Drew the bone, his long bill made it plain
He expected his fee:
Snarled Wolf--"Fiddle de dee,
Be thankful your head's out again."
...

If goodness were always the comrade of beauty I would seek a wife to-morrow; but as divorce between these two is no new thing, and as there are so few lovely forms that enshrine lovely souls, thus uniting both one and the other...

The Unicorn 's a first-rate sort.
He helps the Lion to support
The royal arms of England's King
And keep the Throne from tottering.
I wonder what the King would do
If his supporters all withdrew?...

Each form of beauty's but the new disguise
Of thoughts more beautiful than forms can be;
Sceptics, who search with unanointed eyes,
Never the Earth's wild fairy-dance shall see.

(1917)


You that have gathered together the sons of all races,
And welded them into one,
Lifting the torch of your Freedom on hungering faces
That sailed to the setting sun;
...

I
Three in one, but one in three,
God, who girt her with the sea,
Bade our Commonweal to be:
Nought, if now not one.
Though fraud and fear would sever
The bond assured for ever,...

By the Revolution's dead,
By their Blood in battle shed,
By the Earth that drank their gore,
By the Heaven in which they soar,
By the Union Stripe and Star,
By the God of Righteous War,...

A rake who had, by pleasure stuffing,
Raked mind and body down to nothing,
In wretched vacancy reclined,
Enfeebled both in frame and mind.

As pain and languor chose to bore him,...

("Ma fille, va prier!")

[XXXVII., June, 1830.]


I.

Come, child, to prayer; the busy day is done,
A golden star gleams through the dusk of night;...

Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou great First Cause, least understood:
Who all my sense confined...

("Temps futurs.")

[Part "Lux," Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.]


O vision of the coming time!
When man has 'scaped the trackless slime
And reached the desert spring;...

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
The beautiful Station of Hope.
...

Wild son of Heav'n, with laughter and alarm,
Now East, now West, now North, now South he goes,
Bearing in one harsh hand dark death and storm,
And in the other, sunshine and a rose.

I heard a little child beneath the stars
Talk as he ran along
To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed
A-tiptoe into song.

In his dark eyes lay a wild universe, -...

"A plague o' both the houses!" - MERCUTIO.



As latterly I chanced to pass
A Public House, from which, alas!
The Arms of Oxford dangle!
My ear was startled by a din,...

They do not know the awful tears we shed,
The tender treasures that we keep and kiss;
They could not be so still--our quiet dead
In knowing this.

They do not know what time we turn to fill...

If the bird knew how through the wintry weather
An empty nest would swing by day and night,
It would not weave the strands so close together
Or sing for such delight.
...

Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.
As a boy reckless and wanton,
Wandering with gun in hand through the forest...