Works

"The tender Grace of a day that is past."

The dew is on the roses,
The owl hath spread her wing;
And vocal are the noses
Of peasant and of king:
"Nature" (in short) "reposes;"...

[Greek quotation]

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!
...

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,...

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;
...

Met ye my love?
Ye might in France have met him;
He has a wooing smile,
Who sees cannot forget him!
Met ye my Love?
We shared full many a mile.

Saw ye my Love?...

Great streets of silence led away
To neighborhoods of pause;
Here was no notice, no dissent,
No universe, no laws.

By clocks 't was morning, and for night
The bells at distance called;...

I

Low and mournful be the strain,
Haughty thought be far from me;
Tones of penitence and pain,
Meanings of the tropic sea;
Low and tender in the cell
Where a captive sits in chains....

'As a matter of fact, no man living, or who ever lived, not C'sar or Pericles, not Shakespeare or Michael Angelo, could confer honour more than he took on entering the House of Lords.'
- Saturday Review, December 15, 1883....

That which I learned from the Deity,
that which through lifetime hath helped me,
Meekly and gratefully now, here I suspend in his shrine.

Happily I had a sight
Of my dearest dear last night;
Make her this day smile on me,
And I'll roses give to thee!

(THE PLEA OF THE MUNITION-WORKER)

"Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr,"--
And it's long and long the day is.
From earliest morn to late at night,
And all night long, the selfsame song,---...

The beast to the beast is calling,
And the soul bends down to wait;
Like the stealthy lord of the jungle,
The white man calls his mate.

The beast to the beast is calling,...

When Mazarvan the Magician,
Journeyed westward through Cathay,
Nothing heard he but the praises
Of Badoura on his way.

But the lessening rumor ended
When he came to Khaledan,...

The mystique of the sea,
where waves act as snares,
hang boughs over wet
blackness wherever winds
die driven ashore.

Melancholy vastness-its pleasure
the dim lights swallowed...

'T is midnight: through my troubled dream
Loud wails the tempest's cry;
Before the gale, with tattered sail,
A ship goes plunging by.
What name? Where bound? - The rocks around
Repeat the loud halloo....

A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.
...

Where are they, that song and tale
Tell of? lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Faerylands that trail
Morning summits, dim with dew,
Crimson o'er a crimson sail.

Where in dreams we entered on...

for Maxime du Camp

I.

The wide-eyed child in love with maps and plans
Finds the world equal to his appetite.
How grand the universe by light of lamps,
How petty in the memory's clear sight....

Could there be words found to expresse my losse,
There were some hope, that this my heauy crosse
Might be sustained, and that wretched I
Might once finde comfort: but to haue him die...

Accursed Death, what neede was there at all
Of thee, or who to councell thee did call;
The subiect whereupon these lines I spend
For thee was most vnfit, her timelesse end...