Works

The fount the Spaniard sought in vain
Through all the land of flowers
Leaps glittering from the sandy plain
Our classic grove embowers;
Here youth, unchanging, blooms and smiles,...

All hot and grimy from the road,
Dust gray from arduous years,
I sat me down and eased my load
Beside the Fount of Tears.

The waters sparkled to my eye,
Calm, crystal-like, and cool,...

(a brief fragment of an extensive projected poem.)


'I could be well content, allowed the use
Of past experience, and the wisdom glean'd
From worn-out follies, now acknowledged such,...

He with body waged a fight,
But body won; it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart;
Innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind....

The goblet is sparkling with purpled-tinged wine,
Bright glistens the eye of each guest,
When into the hall comes the Minstrel divine,
To the good he now brings what is best;...

As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree
The Angel of the Earth came down, and offered Earth in fee;
But Adam did not need it,
Nor the plough he would not speed it,...

I love this gray old church, the low, long nave,
The ivied chancel and the slender spire;
No less its shadow on each heaving grave,
With growing osier bound, or living brier;...

The Fire, Air, Earth and Water did contest
Which was the strongest, noblest and the best,
Who was of greatest use and might'est force;
In placide Terms they thought now to discourse,...

That Arabs through the realms of space

May wander on, light-hearted,
Great Allah hath, to all their race,

Four favours meet imparted.

The turban first that ornament
...

A new-born babe was sleeping
Within its cradle fair,
And angel guards were keeping
Its peaceful slumbers there.

Gone was the age of fairies,
And of the elfins wild,...

Four limpid lakes,--four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,
In flowing robes of azure dressed;
Four lovely handmaids, that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West....

When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
But each one thought his petty Rule was high,
If of his house he held the Monarchy....

Ere stopping or turning, to put foorth a hande
Is a charm that thy daies may be long in the land.

Though seventy-times-seven thee Fortune befriend,
O'ertaking at corners is Death in the end.
...

I had four brothers over the sea,
Perrie, Merrie, Dixi, Domine;
And they each sent a present unto me.
Petrum, Partrum, Paradisi, Tempore,
Perrie, Merrie, Dixi, Domine.
...

Four Princesses lived in a Green Tower
A Bright Green Tower in the middle of the sea;
And no one could think oh, no one could think
Who the Four Princesses could be.
...

Sweet faces, that from pictured casements lean
As from a castle window, looking down
On some gay pageant passing through a town,
Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene;...

Spring.

Another four I've left yet to bring on,
Of four times four the last Quarternion
The Winter, Summer, Autumn & the Spring,
In season all these Seasons I shall bring:...

On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty demanded by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the surviving exiles of the Commune.)



Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose,...

Say, St John, who alone peruse
With candid eye the mimic Muse,
What schemes of politics, or laws,
In Gallic lands the patriot draws!
Is then a greater work in hand,
Than all the tomes of Haines's band?...

(For Thomas Walsh)



I


On nights like this the huddled sheep
Are like white clouds upon the grass,
And merry herdsmen guard their sleep
And chat and watch the big stars pass....