Works

Into the woods three huntsmen came,
Seeking the white stag for their game.

They laid them under a green fir-tree
And slept, and dreamed strange things to see.

(FIRST HUNTSMAN)
...

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere -
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:...

Alone alone!
With a heart like a stone,
She maketh her moan
At the feet of the trees,
With her face on her knees,
And her hair streaming over;
Wildly, and wildly, and wildly;...

1.
Whet the bright steel,
Sons of the White Dragon!
Kindle the torch,
Daughter of Hengist!
The steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet,
It is hard, broad, and sharply pointed;...

The dark eleventh hour
Draws on and sees us sold
To every evil power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine hate
Oppression, wrong and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,...

The vision of a haloed host
That weep around an empty throne;
And, aureoles dark and angels dead,
Man with his own life stands alone.

'I am,' he says his bankrupt creed:...

DEDICATION

TO G.W.G.

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.
...

In the bitter waves of woe,
Beaten and tossed about
By the sullen winds that blow
From the desolate shores of doubt,--

When the anchors that faith had cast
Are dragging in the gale,...

And as time past when Cato the severe
Enter'd the circumspacious theatre,
In reverence of his person everyone
Stood as he had been turn'd from flesh to stone;
E'en so my numbers will astonished be...

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,...

Close to the best known author Umbra sits,
The constant index to old Button's wits,
'Who's here?' cries Umbra: 'Only Johnson.'[86]--'Oh!
Your slave,' and exit; but returns with Rowe:...

Roving, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams;
Still for journeys she is dressed;
We wander far by east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought,
At my work I ramble not;
...

My darling once lived by my side,
She scarcely ever went away;
We shared our studies and our play,
Nor did she care to walk or ride
Unless I did the same that day.
...

In the whole wide world there was but one;
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet...

I.

Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores,
Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,...

Something compels me, somewhere. Yet I see
No clear command in Life's long mystery.

Oft have I flung myself beside my horse,
To drink the water from the roadside mire,...

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago! -
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying....

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago!
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying....

Like some school master, kind in being stern,
Who hears the children crying o'er their slates
And calling, "Help me master!" yet helps not,
Since in his silence and refusal lies...

I

What though the soul be tired
For that to which 'twas fired,
The far, dear, still desired,
Beyond the heaven's scope;
Beyond us and above us,
The thing we would have love us,...