Works

Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?'
Devastator of the day!
Know, each substance and relation,
Thorough nature's operation,
Hath its unit, bound and metre;
And every new compound...

Fain had I to-day surprised my mistress,
But soon found I that her door was fasten'd.
Yet I had the key safe in my pocket,
And the darling door I open'd softly!
In the parlour found I not the maiden,...

(For Louise Imogen Guiney)



There is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring...

(From the picture in D'rer's series on "The Life of the Virgin")


The mountains wonder from their cloudy height,
The skies look on and grow more deep with awe;...

Little lady at de do',
W'y you stan' dey knockin'?
Nevah seen you ac' befo'
In er way so shockin'.
Don' you know de sin it is
Fu' to git my temper riz
Wen I 's got de rheumatiz...

Among the taller wood with ivy hung,
The old fox plays and dances round her young.
She snuffs and barks if any passes bye
And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly....

As the kindling glances,
Queen-like and clear,
Which the bright moon lances
From her tranquil sphere
At the sleepless waters
Of a lonely mere,
On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully,...

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
...

I dreamed a Voice, of one God-authorised,
Cried loudly thro' the world, 'Disarm! Disarm!'
And there was consternation in the camps;
And men who strutted under braid and lace...

Safe in the magic of my woods
I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,

Silver and blue and green were showing....

Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,
From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,...

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.

...

It came o'er her sleep, like a voice of those days,
When love, only love was the light of her ways;
And, soft as in moments of bliss long ago,
It whispered her name from the garden below.
...

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...

Rare is the voice itself: but when we sing
To th' lute or viol, then 'tis ravishing.

'Did she care as much as I did
When our paths of Fate divided?
Was the love, then, all onesided,
Did she understand or care?'
Slowly fall the moments leaden,
And the silence seems to deaden,...

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)


Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven's dome with different eyes
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs...

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,...

Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
The other birds woke all around,
Rising with toot and howl they stirred
Their plumage, broke the trembling sound,
They craned their necks, they fluttered wings,...

Oh Sea, that with infinite sadness, and infinite yearning
Liftest thy crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,--
Evermore ebbing and flowing, and evermore returning...