Works

Is it so, that the sword is broken,
Our sword, that was halfway drawn?
Is it so, that the light was a spark,
That the bird we hailed as the lark
Sang in her sleep in the dark,...

She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom, like the light that burns
Vermilion o'er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band...

Rhaicos was born amid the hills wherefrom
Gnidos the light of Caria is discern'd
And small are the white-crested that play near,
And smaller onward are the purple waves....

Who thinks how desolate and strange
To me must seem the autumn's change,
When housed in attic or in chest,
A lonely and unwilling guest,
I lie through nights of bleak December,...

Two parts of us successively command:
The tongue in peace; but then in war the hand.

Malefica quaedam auguriatrix in Anglia fuit, quam demones horribiliter extraxerunt, et imponentes super equum terribilem, per aera rapuerunt; Clamoresque terribiles (ut ferunt) per quatuor ferme miliaria audiebantur.
...

Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,
Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;
Yea, and her mouth's prudent and crude caress
Means even less than her many words to me.
...

'But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy
You?' - 'Father, what you buy me I like best.'
With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,
He swung to his first poised purport of reply.
...

I


The lights are out, and gone are all the guests
That thronging came with merriment and jests
To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane
In the new house,--into the night are gone;...

'A soldier braving disease and death on the battlefield has a seven times better chance of life than a new-born baby.' - Secretary of War, U.S.A.


The Hapless Army from the dark
That lies beyond creation,...

I

The happiest day the happiest hour
My seared and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.


II

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween...

How blest thy creature is, O God,
When, with a single eye,
He views the lustre of thy word,
The dayspring from on high!


Through all the storms that veil the skies,...

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.
...

One sunny morn of May,
When dressed in flowery green
The dewy landscape, charmed
With Nature's fairest scene,
In thoughtful mood
I slowly strayed
O'er hill and dale,
Through bush and glade....

After these vernal rains

That we so warmly sought,
Dear wife, see how our plains

With blessings sweet are fraught!
We cast our distant gaze

Far in the misty blue;...

I saw sweet Poetry turn troubled eyes
On shaggy Science nosing in the grass,
For by that way poor Poetry must pass
On her long pilgrimage to Paradise.
He snuffled, grunted, squealed; perplexed by flies,...

STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION


I am tired of the day with its profitless labours,
And tired of the night with its lack of repose,
I am sick of myself, my surroundings, and neighbours,...

We were living in a flat; it was number eighty-three.
At eighty-four the Barleys lived, a fearsome man was he.
He had a wife and numerous kids. We heard then rip and cuss,...

We were storemen, clerks and packers on an ammunition dump
Twice the size of Cootamundra, and the goods we had to hump
They were bombs as big as water-butts, and cartridges in tons,...

I.

Autumn, like an old poet in a haze
Of golden visions, dreams away his days,
So Hafiz-like that one may almost hear
The singer's thoughts imbue the atmosphere;...