The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her apron'd knees. ...
A weedling wild, on lonely lea, My evening rambles chanc'd to see; And much the weedling tempted me To crop its tender flower: Expos'd to wind and heavy rain, Its head bow'd lowly on the plain;...
By Mystic's banks I held my dream. (I held my fishing rod as well,) The vision was of dace and bream, A fruitless vision, sooth to tell. But round about the sylvan dell...
With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams - Midsummer days! Midsummer days!...
Spring at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall, Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme - Youth is the sign of them, one and all....
Fountains that frisk and sprinkle The moss they overspill; Pools that the breezes crinkle; The wheel beside the mill, With its wet, weedy frill; Wind-shadows in the wheat;...
Come to me to-day wearing your green collar, Make your two orange sleeves float in the air, and come to me. Touch your hair with essence and colour your clothes yellow;...
They spoke of Progress spiring round, Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward, It is not true to say I frowned, Or ran about the room and roared; I might have simply sat and snored, I rose politely in the club...
Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound? A priest? a porter? - Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan,...
Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe?...
Had I the gold that some so vainly spend, For my lost loves a temple would I raise, A shrine for each dear name: there should ascend Incense for ever, and hymns of golden praise;...
A twist of fresh flowers on your dark hair, And your hair is a panther's shadow. On your white cheeks the down of a thousand roses, They speak about your beauty in Lahore. You have your mother's lips;...
She has put on her green robe, she has put on her double veil, my idol; My idol has come to me. She has put on her green robe, my love is a laughing flower;...
Come in haste this dusk, dear child. I will be on the water path When your girl friends go laughing by the road. "Come in haste this dusk; I have become your nightingale,...
O sad-eyed man who yonder sits, Face in a book from morn till night, Who, though the world should go to bits, Pores on right through the waning light; O is it sorrow or delight...
O ships upon the sea, O shapes of air, O lands whose names are made of spice and tar, Old painted empires that are ever fair, From Cochin-China down to Zanzibar! O Beauty simple, soul-less, and bizarre!...
The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall. I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours, on the wall,...
Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away - The last sad hours that were touched with her grace - In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play; The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space...