Works

She had amid her ringlets bound
Green leaves to rival their dark hue;
How could such locks with beauty bound
Dry up their dew,
Wither them through and through?

She had within her dark eyes lit...

I.

Came a spicy smell of showers
On the purple wings of night,
And a pearl-encrusted crescent
On the lake looked still and white,
While a sound of distant singing...

In the courts of truth tread softly,
Though your tread be firm and bold;
Your steps may awaken echoes,
Resounding through years untold.
The trend of the age is onward,
And you should not lag behind;...

The seeds of treason choke up as they spring:
He acts the crime that gives it cherishing.

Here is a tale for infants and old nurses:
There was a man who gathered rags; and peddled:
Who lived alone: with no one ever meddled:
And this old man was very fond of verses....

The playful way thy wanton hair
Was tossing in the wind;
Thy girlish, vain vexation
Is treasured in my mind.

Held in my heart each sacred spot,
O'er which we roamed at will:...

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.

2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.
...

We were a crew of what you please,
Men with the lust of gold gone mad;
Dutch and Yankee and Portuguese,
With a nigger or two from Trinidad,
The scum of the Caribbees:...

Lord Christ, let me but hold Thy hand
And all the rest may go.
For nothing is, but only seems,
And life is full of idle dreams,
Until Thyself we know.

The whole wide world is nought beside...

The young and old came to a poet in a crowd,
The house is already Filled with guests.
The poet took them to the magnificent garden
That he grew up nearby his heart.
Then, so that the guests enjoy themselves,...

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,...

Carmen Patibulare - To H. S.



Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook
And the rope of the Black Election,
'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule
Can never achieve perfection:...

"Trees," so he said and laid him lovingly
At a great beech-tree's root, "are my best friends.
Upon their love it seems my life depends.
No dog or woman for me! Give me a tree!...

Of all the trees in England,
Her sweet three corners in,
Only the Ash, the bonnie Ash
Burns fierce while it is green.

Of all the trees in England,
From sea to sea again,...

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)



I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
...

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell,
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,...

There beyond my window ledge,
Heaped against the sky, a hedge
Of huge and waving tree-tops stands
With multitudes of fluttering hands.

Wave they, beat they, to and fro,...

Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend....

There stood a low and ivied roof,
As gazing rustics tell,
In times of chivalry and song
'Yclept the holy well.

Above the ivies' branchlets gray
In glistening clusters shone;...

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men...