Works

"A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up."

And the Spirit said,
"I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will."
And I cried, "Agreed...

In a life where the clocks
Are slow or fast,
It is a pleasant thing
To die together
As we are dying.

From the Japanese of the Wife of Bes-syo Ko-saburo Naga-haru, (sixteenth century).

Eileen of four,
Eileen of smiles;
Eileen of five,
Eileen of tears;
Eileen of ten, of fifteen years,
Eileen of youth
And woman's wiles;
Eileen of twenty,
In love's land,...

Say not, sad bell, another hour hath come,
Bare for the record of a world of crime;
Toll, rather, friend, the end of hideous Time,
Wherein we bloom, live, die, yet have no home!
...

It is dark as a cave,
Or a vault in the nave
When the iron door
Is closed, and the floor
Of the church relaid
With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk
Cares not for the dark...

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives it ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sang a little clod of clay,...

Shut it out of the heart this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.

The bond of the flesh is transitory,...

The dew falls and the stars fall,
The sun falls in the west,
But never more
Through the closed door,
Shall the one that I loved best
Return to me:
A salt tear is the sea,...

The melancholy of the woods and plains
When summer nears its close; the drowsy, dim,
Unfathomed sadness of the mists that swim
About the valleys after night-long rains;...

The Session's over. We must say farewell
To these east winds and to this eastern sea,
For summer comes, with swallow and with bee,
With many a flower and many a golfing swell.
...

I am a cloud in the heaven's height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea
But why do the pines on the mountain's crest...

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken...

Seest thou that cloud that rides in state,
Part ruby-like, part candidate?
It is no other than the bed
Where Venus sleeps half-smothered.

Give me no coil of d'mon flowers -
Pale Messalines that faint and brood
Through the spent secret twilight hours
On their strange feasts of blood.

Give me wild things of moss and peat -...

What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset's tides of light -
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
Like some new-found Hesperides!
...

A grand stairway do these clouds appear
As they heavenward rise, tier upon tier,
With clearly-marked space of blue between,
Compared with which human art looks mean.
...

Dark and yet darker my day's clouded o'er;
Are its bright joys all fled, and its sunshine no more?
I look to the skies for the bright bow in vain,
For constantly "clouds return after the rain."
...

The clouds that promise a glorious morrow
Are fading slowly, one by one;
The earth no more bright rays may borrow
From her loved Lord, the golden sun;
Gray evening shadows are softly creeping,...

Some sings of the lily, and daisy, and rose,
And the pansies and pinks that the Summertime throws
In the green grassy lap of the medder that lays
Blinkin' up at the skyes through the sunshiney days;...

John Trott was desired by two witty peers
To tell them the reason why asses had ears?
'An't please you,' quoth John, 'I'm not given to letters,
Nor dare I pretend to know more than my betters;...