Works

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and widow'd raggedness defend you...

The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill,
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies;
The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still....

The time has been that these wild solitudes,
Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me
Oftener than now; and when the ills of life
Had chafed my spirit, when the unsteady pulse...

Come through the gloom of clouded skies,
The slow dim rain and fog athwart;
Through east winds keen with wrong and lies
Come and lift up my hopeless heart.

Come through the sickness and the pain,...

Across the hills and down the narrow ways,
And up the valley where the free winds sweep,
The earth is folded in an ermined sleep
That mocks the melting mirth of myriad Mays....

Came the dread Archer up yonder lawn -
Night is the time for the old to die -
But woe for an arrow that smote the fawn,
When the hind that was sick unscathed went by.
...

Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills' white verge.
...

A robin said: The Spring will never come,
And I shall never care to build again.
A Rosebush said: These frosts are wearisome,
My sap will never stir for sun or rain....

Great dignity ever attends great grief,
And silently walks beside it;
And I always know when I see such woe
That Invisible Helpers guide it.
And I know deep sorrow is like a tide,...

I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep...

Be where I may when Death brings in his bill,
Demanding payment for life's ling'ring debt,
Or in my native village nestling still,
Or tracing scenes I've never known as yet,...

Let me not die for ever, when I'm gone
To the cold earth! but let my memory
Live like the gorgeous western light that shone
Over the clouds where sank day's majesty.
Let me not be forgotten! though the grave...

When my time comes to quit this pleasing scene,
And drop from out the busy life of men;
When I shall cease to be where I have been
So willingly, and ne'er may be again;
When my abandoned tabernacle's dust...

Mine be a cot beside the hill,
A bee-hive's hum shall sooth my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.

The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch,...

If one could have a hundred years to live,
After the settlement of youth's unrest,
A hundred years of vigorous life to give
To the pursuit of what he counted best,...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,...

Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,
Behold! thou art a woman still!
And, by that sacred name and dear,
I bid thy better self appear.
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see...

This Land is the orphan kiddie
Of the group with their stars in the Flag,
And it's looked on Outside as an alien,
Where its treatment makes honest men gag.
It's treated the same as the harlot...

Once in a dream of Babylon
I sat with Lilith and Cain
At the world-old drama, "From God to God,"
In the House of Things Profane;
Trumpets and lights, and the players
Swung to the stage, and then...

How she held up the horses' heads,
Firm-lipped, with steady rein,
Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,
Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour
She passed against the sea,...