Works

The sign of the house should be chang'd, I'll be sworn,
Where enchanted we find so much beauty and grace;
Then quick from the door let the lion be torn,
And an angel expand her white wings in his place.

When I was young, we dwelt in a vale
By a misty fen that rang all night,
And thus it was the maidens pale
I knew so well, whose garments trail
Across the reeds to a window light....

The dearest child in all the world,
Should have the dearest songs,
And that is why this little book
To David-Boy belongs.

The Incubus.


The way was dark within the gloomy church-yard,
As I wandered through the woodland near the stream,
With slow and heavy tread
Through a city of the dead,...

Stranger! a while beneath this aged tree
Rest thee, the hills beyond, and flowery meads,
Surveying; and if Nature's charms may wake
A sweet and silent transport at thine heart,...

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke...

The greater masters of the commonplace,
REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER - only these
Could paint her all to you: experienced ease
And antique liveliness and ponderous grace;...

Lived on one's back,
In the long hours of repose,
Life is a practical nightmare -
Hideous asleep or awake.

Shoulders and loins
Ache - - -!
Ache, and the mattress,...

You are carried in a basket,
Like a carcase from the shambles,
To the theatre, a cockpit
Where they stretch you on a table.

Then they bid you close your eyelids,
And they mask you with a napkin,...

Her little face is like a walnut shell
With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns
Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;
And all about her clings an old, sweet smell....

(May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901)

Sceptre and orb and crown,
High ensigns of a sovranty containing
The beauty and strength and state of half a World,
Pass from her, and she fades...

This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.


To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
As with the gentle fading of the year
Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end...

Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity.



A shadow slept folded in vestments,
The dream of a smile on its face,
Dim, soft as the gleam after sunset...

Ye vales and hills whose beauty hither drew
The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you
His eyes have closed! And ye, loved books, no more
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,...

Not seldom, clad in radiant vest,
Deceitfully goes forth the Morn;
Not seldom Evening in the west
Sinks smilingly forsworn.

The smoothest seas will sometimes prove,
To the confiding Bark, untrue;...

This mound in some remote and dateless day
Rear'd o'er a Chieftain of the Age [1] of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house...

This is the place where William's kingly power
Did from their poor and peaceful homes expel,
Unfriended, desolate, and shelterless,
The habitants of all the fertile track...

Stranger! awhile upon this mossy bank
Recline thee. If the Sun rides high, the breeze,
That loves to ripple o'er the rivulet,
Will play around thy brow, and the cool sound...

STRANGER! the MAN OF NATURE lies not here:
Enshrin'd far distant by his [1] rival's side
His relics rest, there by the giddy throng
With blind idolatry alike revered!
Wiselier directed have thy pilgrim feet...

Blessed are those who have not seen,
And who have yet believed
The witness, here that has not been,
From heaven they have received.

Blessed are those who have not known...