Works

Would I woo, and would I win?
Would I well my work begin?
Would I evermore be crowned
With the end that I propound?
Would I frustrate or prevent
All aspects malevolent?...

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here a-while,
To blush and gently smile;
And go at last.

What, were ye born to be...

Oh, the rare exhilaration,
Oh, the novel delectation
Of a ride down the slide!
Packed like ice in zero weather,
Pleasure-seekers close together,
On a board as thin as wafer,...

High is our calling, Friend! Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,...

Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
...

Suggested on returning home for my holidays by an old portrait of the poet, which hangs in my room.

Old friend! - I always loved thee;
In childhood's early days,
Delighted I would listen...

Hey, Toby, Toby, Toby!'Dead?
The silence is a flood
That closes, choking, overhead,
And chills the living blood.

The leaping friend, whose jolly bark
Was greeting every night,...

(Oscar Wilde.)


I gazed upon thee desolate and heard
Thine anguished cry when fell the iron gin
That all but broke thy soul, yet gave thy word
The strength to ask forgiveness of thy sin.
...

With sordid floods the wintry Urn
Hath stain'd fair Richmond's level green:
Her naked hill the Dryads mourn,
No longer a poetic scene.
No longer there thy raptur'd eye...

("Canaris! nous t'avons oubli'.")

[VIII., October, 1832.]


O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song
Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long!
But when the tragic actor's part is done,...

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers,
Red the last cloud of a sun that has set;
What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers,
What of your waking, if England forget?
...

Ellisland, Monday Evening.

Your news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir,
With little admiring or blaming;
The papers are barren of home-news or foreign,...

Concealed within the shady wood
A mother left her sleeping child,
And flew, to cull her rustic food,
The fruitage of the forest wild.

But storms upon her pathway rise,...

When midnight came to close the year,
We sighed to think it thus should take
The hours it gave us--hours as dear
As sympathy and love could make
Their blessed moments,--every sun...

KILLED IN AN AEROPLANE ACCIDENT, JULY, 1916


It was Thy will, O God. And so he died!
For seventeen sweet years he was a child
Upon whose grace Thy loving-kindness smiled,...

Oh, that the golden lyre divine
Whence David smote flame-tones were mine!
Oh, that the silent harp which hung
Untuned, unstrung,
Upon the willows by the river,
Would throb beneath my touch and quiver...

Stay while ye will, or go,
And leave no scent behind ye:
Yet trust me, I shall know
The place where I may find ye.

Within my Lucia's cheek,
(Whose livery ye wear)
Play ye at hide or seek,...

1.

Think'st thou I saw thy beauteous eyes,
Suffus'd in tears, implore to stay;
And heard unmov'd thy plenteous sighs,
Which said far more than words can say?


2.
...

WRITTEN AT LACOCK ABBEY, JANUARY, 1832.


When I would sing thy beauty's light,
Such various forms, and all so bright,
I've seen thee, from thy childhood, wear,
I know not which to call most fair,...

You turn your back, you turn your back,
And never your face to me,
Alone you take your homeward track,
And scorn my company.

What will you do when Charley's seen
Dewbeating down this way?...