Works

When the walls were red
That now are seen
To be overspread
With a mouldy green,
A fresh fair head
Would often lean
From the sunny casement
And scan the scene,...

(1803)
See "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON



In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,...

They came, the brothers, and took two chairs
In their usual quiet way;
And for a time we did not think
They had much to say.

And they began and talked awhile
Of ordinary things,...

I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,
Of the periwinks' rockwork lair,
Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -
And the something else seen there.
...

Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;
Make me forget that there was ever a one
I walked with in the meek light of the moon
When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;...

They crush together - a rustling heap of flesh -
Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then
They part, enmesh,
And crush together again,
Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose...

O do not praise my beauty more,
In such word-wild degree,
And say I am one all eyes adore;
For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:
"From now unto the end...

To An Unknowing God



Much wonder I - here long low-laid -
That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,...

So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God's consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!
...

That no man schemed it is my hope -
Yea, that it fell by will and scope
Of That Which some enthrone,
And for whose meaning myriads grope.

For I would not that of my kind...

I

When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
Brought a strange delight to me.

II

In the battle-breathing jingle...

Bother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
When the day's pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,...

The sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.

The level flare raked pane and pediment...

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,...

"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!

"Of such strange tidings what think ye,
O birds in brown that peck and preen?...

(KHYBER PASS, 1842)
A TRADITION OF J. B. L-, T. G. B-, AND J. L-.



Three captains went to Indian wars,
And only one returned:
Their mate of yore, he singly wore...

While he was here in breath and bone,
To speak to and to see,
Would I had known more clearly known -
What that man did for me

When the wind scraped a minor lay,
And the spent west from white...

Out of the past there rises a week -
Who shall read the years O! -
Out of the past there rises a week
Enringed with a purple zone.
Out of the past there rises a week...

I've been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never again,
By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane,
And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the chore...

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
Filling up your narrow room?
You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure -
Picture of bachelor gloom!
...