Works

LONDON
Used to wear her lights splendidly,
Flinging her shawl-fringe over the River,
Tassels in abandon.

And up in the sky
A two-eyed clock, like an owl...

Mostly in a dull rotation
We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation,
Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.
...

Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
And flaming brains are the white heart of all.
...

About the country they may talk who will,
Who praise it ever to the town's despite.
Let him extol the charms of wood and hill
Who finds them peerless. None disputes his right.
...

Beyond the path of the outmost sun through utter darkness hurled,
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled,
Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world.
...

Woman! experience might have told me
That all must love thee, who behold thee:
Surely experience might have taught
Thy firmest promises are nought;
But, plac'd in all thy charms before me,...

Close keep your lips, if that you mean
To be accounted inside clean:
For if you cleave them we shall see
There in your teeth much leprosy.

Those who have laid the harp aside
And turn'd to idler things,
From very restlessness have tried
The loose and dusty strings.
And, catching back some favourite strain,
Run with it o'er the chords again....

Wordsworth I love, his books are like the fields,
Not filled with flowers, but works of human kind;
The pleasant weed a fragrant pleasure yields,
The briar and broomwood shaken by the wind,...

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn....

Madam Life's a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She's the tenant of the room,
He's the ruffian on the stair.

You shall see her as a friend,
You shall bilk him once and twice;...

Thick is the darkness -
Sunward, O, sunward!
Rough is the highway -
Onward, still onward!

Dawn harbours surely
East of the shadows.
Facing us somewhere
Spread the sweet meadows.
...

I.

There's a story no one knows,
But myself, about a rose
And a fairy and a star
Where the Toyland people are.
Once when I had gone to bed,
Mother said it was a dream,...

Let us twain walk aside from the rest;
Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony,
Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none, Tell me the whole story,...

The bookman he's a humming-bird -
His feasts are honey-fine, -
(With hi! hilloo!
And clover-dew
And roses lush and rare!)
Hiss roses are the phrase and word
Of olden tomes divine;...

Where art thou gone, light-ankled Youth?
With wing at either shoulder,
And smile that never left thy mouth
Until the Hours grew colder:

Then somewhat seem'd to whisper near...

Drink wine, and live here blitheful while ye may;
The morrow's life too late is; Live to-day.

I know! I know!--
The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe,--
The pang of loss,--
The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.
"--Heedless and careless, still the world wags on,...

("Enfants, on vous dira plus tard.")

[January, 1871.]


In later years, they'll tell you grandpapa
Adored his little darlings; for them did
His utmost just to pleasure them and mar...

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!...