Works

On the black road through the wood
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood;
By the wild pool in the wood,
As I rode.

From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,...

Moko, the Educated Ape is here,
The pet of vaudeville, so the posters say,
And every night the gaping people pay
To see him in his panoply appear;
To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer,...

O fleece, billowing down to the shoulders!
O curls! O perfume charged with languor!
Ecstasy! To populate love's dark alcove,
With memories sleeping tonight in your hair,...

They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind,
The devil-torn, the sick, the sore;
Thy heart their well of life they find,
Thine ear their open door.

Ah, who can tell the joy in Palestine--...

To a young physician, with Dore's picture of Christ healing the sick.


So stood of old the holy Christ
Amidst the suffering throng;
With whom His lightest touch sufficed...

One night when I went down
Thames' side, in London Town,
A heap of rags saw I,
And sat me down close by.
That thing could shout and bawl,
But showed no face at all;
When any steamer passed...

Said the hearse-horse to the coffin,
"What the devil have you there?
I may trot from court to square,
Yet it neither swears nor groans,
When I jolt it over stones."
Said the coffin to the hearse-horse,...

If thus we needs must goe,
What shall our one Heart doe,
This One made of our Two?

Madame, two Hearts we brake,
And from them both did take
The best, one Heart to make.
...

In prayer the lips ne'er act the winning part
Without the sweet concurrence of the heart.

The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be...

Who hath a heart courageous
Will fight with right good cheer;
For well may he his foes out-face
Who owns no foe called Fear!

Who hath a heart courageous
Will fight as knight of old...

Sin enslaved me many years,
And led me bound and blind;
Till at length a thousand fears
Came swarming o'er my mind.


'Where,' I said, in deep distress,
'Will these sinful pleasures end?...

There dwelt a widow learned and devout,
Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill.
Three sons she had, who went to find the world.
They promised to return, but wandered still....

Dear love, let this my song fly to you:
Perchance forget it came from me.
It shall not vex you, shall not woo you;
But in your breast lie quietly.

Only beware, when once it tarries...

When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum,
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come:
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old...

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon;
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-gutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June:
...

Oh, the track through the scrub groweth ever more dreary,
And lower and lower his grey head doth bow;
For the swagman is old and the swagman is weary,
He's been tramping for over a century now....

O what to me the little room
That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;
He bade me out into the gloom,
And my breast lies upon his breast.

O what to me my mother's care,...

My hope and my love, we will go for a while into the wood, scattering the dew, where we will see the trout, we will see the blackbird on its nest; the deer and the buck calling, the little bird that is sweetest singing on the b...

I wore my heart upon my sleeve,
Tis most unwise, they say, to do -
But then how could I but believe
The foolish thing was safe with you?
Yet, had I known, 'twas safer far...