Works

Air and sky are swathed in gold
Fold on fold,
Light glows through the trees like wine.
Earth, sun-quickened, swoons for bliss
'Neath his kiss,
Breathless in a trance divine.

...

Along the tops of all the yellow trees,
The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;
And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise
Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses;...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.
...

Autumn clouds are flying, flying
O'er the waste of blue;
Summer flowers are dying, dying,
Late so lovely new.
Labouring wains are slowly rolling
Home with winter grain;...

The sky is dark and the air is full of snow,
I go to a warmer clime afar and away;
Though my heart is so tired I do not care for it now,
But here in my empty nest I cannot stay;
Thus cried the swallow,...

I hear them say to me, your crystal eyes,
'Strange love, what merit do you find in me?'
Be charming and be still! My heart, disturbed
By all except the candour of the flesh
...

(INSCRIBED TO ONE BEYOND SEAS)

Know by the thread of music woven through
This fragile web of cadences I spin,
That I have only caught these songs since you
Voiced them upon your haunting violin.
...

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.
...

The wind is rising and the leaves are swept
Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall
Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl
Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept...

The sun sets out the autumn crocuses
And fills them up a pouring measure
Of death-producing wine, till treasure
Runs waste down their chalices.

All, all Persephone's pale cups of mould...

Beneath the shade a spreading Beech displays,
Hylas and Aegon sung their rural lays,
This mourn'd a faithless, that an absent Love,
And Delia's name and Doris' fill'd the Grove....

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,
And gone the Summer's pomp and show,
And Autumn, in his leafless bowers,
Is waiting for the Winter's snow.

I said to Earth, so cold and gray,...

Like music heard in mellow chime,
The charm of her transforming time
Upon my senses steals
As softly as from sunny walls,
In day's decline, their shadow falls
Across the sleeping fields.
...

Who will gather with me the fallen year,
This drift of forgotten forsaken leaves,
Ah! who give ear
To the sigh October heaves
At summer's passing by!
Who will come walk with me...

(Macmillan's Magazine, November 1868.)


Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring:
Of if these bloom when worn-out autumn grieves,
Let them lie hid in double shade of leaves,...

Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.

"Oh! Autumn winds, what means this plaintive wailing
Around the quiet homestead where we dwell?
Whence come ye, say, and what the story mournful
That your weird voices ever seek to tell -...

It is autumn; not without,
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
Singing, building without rest;...

Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.

The mountains that infold,...

SHE. - "Up and down, up and down,
From early eve to early day.
Life is quicker in the town;
When you've leisure, anyway!

"Down and up, down and up!
O will no one stop and speak?...