Works

If thou art sweet as they are sad
Who on the shores of Time's salt sea
Watch on the dim horizon fade
Ships bearing love to night and thee;

If past all beacons Hope hath lit...

There will be thunder then. Remember me.
Say ' She asked for storms.' The entire
world will turn the colour of crimson stone,
and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.
...

Restless and hot two children lay
Plagued with uneasy dreams,
Each wandered lonely through false day
A twilight torn with screams.

True to the bed-time story, Ben
Pursued his wounded bear,...

When the boughs of the garden hang heavy with rain
And the blackbird reneweth his song,
And the thunder departing yet rolleth again,
I remember the ending of wrong.
...

My mind has thunderstorms,
That brood for heavy hours:
Until they rain me words,
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.

Yet come, dark thunderstorms,...

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday--
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see....

So well the week has sped, hast thou a friend,
Go spend an hour in converse. It will lend
New beauty to thy labours and thy life
To pause a little sometimes in the strife.
Toil soon seems rude...

In poisonous dens, where traitors hide
Like bats that fear the day,
While all the land our charters claim
Is sweating blood and breathing flame,
Dead to their country's woe and shame,...

All her corn-fields rippled in the sunshine,
All her lovely vines, sweets-laden, bowed;
Yet some weeks to harvest and to vintage:
When, as one man's hand, a cloud...

These fresh beauties, we can prove,
Once were virgins, sick of love,
Turn'd to flowers: still in some,
Colours go and colours come.

Make not of thy heart a casket,
Opening seldom, quick to close;
But of bread a wide-mouthed basket,
Or a cup that overflows.

Thy hill leave not, O Spring,
Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.
Thy western cliff-caves keep
O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain
With grumbling wild and deep....

More sweet thy pipe's enchanting melody
Than streams that fall from broken rocks on high.
Say, by the nymphs, that guard the sacred scene,
Where lowly tamarisks shade these hillocks green,...

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,...

For Mademoiselle De Sillery.[1]

I had the Phrygian quit,
Charm'd with Italian wit;[2]
But a divinity
Would on Parnassus see
A fable more from me.
Such challenge to refuse,...

A shepherd who was deeply in love with a shepherdess was sitting one day by her side trying to find words to express the emotions her charms created in his breast.
...

Hadst thou a ship, in whose vast hold lay stored
The priceless riches of all climes and lands,
Say, wouldst thou let it float upon the seas
Unpiloted, of fickle winds the sport,...

We see not, know not; all our way
Is night, with Thee alone is day
From out the torrent's troubled drift,
Above the storm our prayers we lift,
Thy will be done!
...

"Thy Will be done!"
Let all the worlds
Resound with that divinest prayer!
The joyous souls redeemed from ill
Know all the wonders of Thy Will;
Heaven's highest bliss is surely this,--...

Sometimes the silver cord of life
Is loosed at one brief stroke;
As when the elements at strife,
With Nature's wild contentions rife,
Uproot the sturdy oak.

Or fell disease, in patience borne,...