Works

Brown earth, sun-soaked,
Beneath his head
And over the quiet limbs....
Through time unreckoned
Lay this brown earth for him. Now is he come.
Truly he hath a sweet bed.

The perfume shed...

Tune - "Laddie, lie near me."



I.

'Twas na her bonnie blue een was my ruin;
Fair tho' she be, that was ne'er my undoing:
'Twas the dear smile when naebody did mind us,...

Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
If not quite dim, yet rather so,
Still yours from others they shall know
Twenty years hence.

Twenty years hence though it may hap
That I be called to take a nap...

Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,...

Two honder year ago, de worl' is purty slow
Even folk upon dis contree 's not so smart,
Den who is travel roun' an' look out de pleasan' groun'
For geev' de Yankee peop' a leetle start?...

I.

Parent to those, whose infant days
No human parent know;
To thee, O Charity! the praise
Of filial love shall flow.

Base want, and vice, a foe to all!...

At the meeting of the New York Harvard Club, February 21, 1878.

"CHRISTO ET ECCLESLE." 1700

To GOD'S ANOINTED AND HIS CHOSEN FLOCK
So ran the phrase the black-robed conclave chose...

I.

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek,...

Once on the top of Tynwald's formal mound
(Still marked with green turf circles narrowing
Stage above stage) would sit this Island's King,
The laws to promulgate, enrobed and crowned:...

And as time past when Cato the severe
Enter'd the circumspacious theatre,
In reverence of his person everyone
Stood as he had been turn'd from flesh to stone;
E'en so my numbers will astonished be...

Oh, never let on to your own true love
That ever you drank a drop;
That ever you played in a two-up school
Or slept in a sly-grog shop;
That ever a bad girl nursed you round,
That ever you sank so low....

By Sidney and Clifford Lanier.
...

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,...

Three Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The first, in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;...

White from her chrysalis of cloud,
The moth-like moon swings upward through the night;
And all the bee-like stars that crowd
The hollow hive of heav'n wane in her light.
...

This is the place where they all were bred;
Some of the rafters are standing still;
Now they are scattered and lost and dead,
Every one from the old nest fled,
Out of the shadow of Kiley's Hill.
...

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?...

Sing me to death; for till thy voice be clear,
'Twill never please the palate of mine ear.

How should the world be luckier if this house,
Where passion and precision have been one
Time out of mind, became too ruinous
To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun?...

As gilliflowers do but stay
To blow, and seed, and so away;
So you, sweet lady, sweet as May,
The garden's glory, lived a while
To lend the world your scent and smile....