Works

April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.

The snow-melted torrents are brawling;...

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness"


The heart hath its moments of hopeless gloom,
As rayless as is the dark night of the tomb;
When the past has no spell, the future no ray,...

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time un-proved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed...

What is the soul? Is it the wind
Among the branches of the mind?
Is it the sea against Time's shore
Breaking and broken evermore?
Is it the shore that breaks Time's sea,
The verge of vast Eternity?...

You cannot take from out my heart the growing,
The green, sweet growing, and the vivid thrill.
"O Earth," you cry, "you should be old, not glowing
With youth and all youth's strength and beauty still!"
...

God gives to none so absolute an ease
As not to know or feel some grievances.

In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play,
And, 'Thirteen hundred years agone,' they say,
'Two saints met often where those waters flow.
...

The Day has never understood the Gloaming or the Night;
Though sired by one Creative Power, and nursed at Nature's breast;
The White Man ever fails to read the Dark Man's heart aright;...

What exultations in my mind,
From the love-bite of this Easter wind!
My head thrown back, my face doth shine
Like yonder Sun's, but warmer mine.
A butterfly - from who knows where -...

April 1, 1888

Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading
In her reluctant hands.
Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading,
As pensively she stands
Awaiting Easter's benediction falling,...

The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,...

Let all the flowers wake to life;
Let all the songsters sing;
Let everything that lives on earth
Become a joyous thing.

Wake up, thou pansy, purple-eyed,
And greet the dewy spring;...

When dawns on earth the Easter sun
The dear saints feel an answering thrill.
With whitest flowers their hands they fill;
And, singing all in unison,

Unto the battlements they press--...

Oh bells of Easter morn, oh solemn sounding bells,
Which fill the hollow cells
Of the blue April air with a most sweet refrain,
Ye fill my heart with pain.
...

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome....

Naples, 1849


Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last...

I.

How very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
Effecting thus complete and whole,
A purpose or the human soul'...

Who comes (my soul no longer doubt),
Rising from earth's wormy sod,
And whilst ten thousand angels sing,
Ascends - ascends to heaven, a God?

Saviour, Lord, I know thee now!...