Works

Your birthday, sweetheart, is my birthday too,
For, had you not been born,
I who began to live beholding you
Up early as the morn,
That day in June beside the rose-hung stream,
Had never lived at all -...

Two centuries' winter storms have lashed the changing sands of Falmouth's shore,
Deep-voiced, the winds, swift winged, wild, have echoed there the ocean's roar....

(February 15 - September 28, 1894)


To V. G.

That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie
In the green peace within your gates, he came
To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy,...

Do what is good, and humanity's godlike plant thou wilt nourish;
Plan what is fair, and thou'lt strew seeds of the godlike around.

From "Arion," an unpublished Masque

I


He. Aglai-a! Aglai-a!
Sweet, awaken and be glad.
She. Who is this that calls Aglaia?
Is it thou, my dearest lad?
He. 'Tis Arion, 'tis Arion,...

A Shooting-box in the West of Ireland. A Bedchamber.
LAURENCE RABY and MELCHIOR. Night.

Melchior:
Surely in the great beginning God made all things good, and still...

How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleaving
All with a flash of blue! - when will she be leaving
Her room, where the night still hangs like a half- folded bat,...

One day Ambition, in his endless round,
All filled with vague and nameless longings, found
Slow wasting Genius, who from spot to spot
Went idly grazing, through the Realms of Thought.
...

And have we done with War at last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
...

Two dead men boarded a spectral ship
In the astral Port of Space;
On that ghost-filled barque, they met in the dark,
And halted, face to face.

'Now whither away' - called one of the ghosts,...

Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,...

Two honder year ago, de worl' is purty slow
Even folk upon dis contree 's not so smart,
Den who is travel roun' an' look out de pleasan' groun'
For geev' de Yankee peop' a leetle start?...

I.

Parent to those, whose infant days
No human parent know;
To thee, O Charity! the praise
Of filial love shall flow.

Base want, and vice, a foe to all!...

I

Once a fowler, young and artless,
To the quiet greenwood came;
Full of skill was he and heartless
In pursuit of feathered game.
And betimes he chanced to see
Eros perching in a tree.
...

Were thou and I the white pinions
On some eager, heaven-born dove,
Swift would we mount to the old dominions,
To our rest of old, my love!

Were thou and I trembling strands...

I
I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

II...

A red rose in my lady's hair,
A white rose in her fingers,
A wild bird singing low, somewhere,
A song that pulses, lingers.
The sound of dancing and of mirth,
The fiddle's merry chiming,...

Only two African kopjes,
Only the cart-tracks that wind
Empty and open between 'em,
Only the Transvaal behind;
Only an Aldershot column
Marching to conquer the land . . .
Only a sudden and solemn...

Two little boots all rough an' wo',
Two little boots!
Law, I 's kissed 'em times befo',
Dese little boots!
Seems de toes a-peepin' thoo
Dis hyeah hole an' sayin' "Boo!"
Evah time dey looks at you--...

1

"There is no God," one said,
And love is lust;
When I am dead I'm dead,
And all is dust.

"Be merry while you can
Before you're gray;
With some wild courtesan...