Works

One neet aw went hooam, what time aw can't tell,
But it must ha been lat, for awd th' street to mysel.
Furst one clock, then t'other, kept ringin aght chimes,
Aw wor gaumless, a chap will get gaumless sometimes....

The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.
...

Since Anna, whose bounty thy merits had fed,
Ere her own was laid low, had exalted thy head:
And since our good queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads for such as are humbled in dust,...

CHARIOT

My pretty dear Cuz, tho' I've roved the town o'er,
To dispatch in an hour some visits a score;
Though, since first on the wheels, I've been every day...

He lay awake, with a harassed air,
And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
Seemed trouble-tried
As the dawn drew in on their faces there.

The chamber looked far over the sea...

Violets and leaves of vine,
Into a frail, fair wreath
We gather and entwine:
A wreath for Love to wear,
Fragrant as his own breath,
To crown his brow divine,
All day till night is near....

From Hull, Halifax, and Hell, good Lord deliver us.
A Yorkshire Proverb.


It's hard when fowks can't finnd their wark
Wheer they've bin bred an' born;
When I were young I awlus thowt...

Green Tunisia, I have come to you as a lover
On my brow, a rose and a book
For I am the Damascene whose profession is passion
Whose singing turns the herbs green
A Damascene moon travels through my blood...

I wish I'd never gone to board
In that house where I met
The touring lady from abroad,
Who mocks my nightmares yet.
I wish, I wish that she had saved
Her news of what she'd seen,...

Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn's weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox...

'La maison sans enfants!' - VICTOR HUGO.


I.

A month without sight of the sun
Rising or reigning or setting
Through days without use of the day,
Who calls it the month of May?...

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;...

She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen
Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes,
Wherein th' unconquerable soul defies,
And Love sits throned, imperious and serene.
...

While the earth is dark and grey
How I laugh within: I know
In my breast what ardours gay
From the morning overflow.

Though the cheek be white and wet
In my heart no fear may fall:...

Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.
...

I. MORNING

The village fades away
Where I last night came,
Where they housed me and fed me
And never asked my name.

The sun shines bright, my step is light,
I, who have no abode,...

I'll tell you how the sun rose, --
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun....

On a sunny brae alone I lay
One summer afternoon;
It was the marriage-time of May,
With her young lover, June.

From her mother's heart seemed loath to part
That queen of bridal charms,...

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam,
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay
Most idly floating in the noontide beam.
Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway...

O gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,...