Works

(To Maurice Baring)

I waited for a miracle to-night.
Dim was the earth beneath a star-swept sky,
Her boughs were vague in that phantasmal light,
Her current rippled past invisibly....

If the Moon had a hand
I wonder would she
Stretch it down unto me?

If she did, I would go
To her glacier land,
To her ice-covered strand.

I would run, I would fly,...

Thy beauty haunts me heart and soul,
Oh thou fair Moon, so close and bright;
Thy beauty makes me like the child
That cries aloud to own thy light:
The little child that lifts each arm...

She comes! again she comes, the bright-eyed moon!
Under a ragged cloud I found her out,
Clasping her own dark orb like hope in doubt!
That ragged cloud hath waited her since noon,...

The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.

Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;...

Iron and granite and rust,
In a crumbling garden old,
Where the roses are paler than dust
And the lilies are green with gold,

Under the racing moon,
Inconscious of war or crime,...

I.

From hill and hollow, side by side,
The shadows came, like dreams, to sit
And watch, mysterious, sunset-eyed,
The wool-winged moths and bats aflit,
And the lone owl that cried and cried....

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

He coveted her portrait.
He toiled as she grew gay.
She loved to see him labor
In that devoted way.

And in the end it pleased her,...

The moon is distant from the sea,
And yet with amber hands
She leads him, docile as a boy,
Along appointed sands.

He never misses a degree;
Obedient to her eye,...

I

I have risen again,
And awhile survey
By my chilly ray
Through your window-pane
Your upturned face,
As you think, "Ah-she
Now dreams of me
In her distant place!"

II...

Sleep! Cast thy canopy
Over this sleeper's brain,
Dim grow his memory,
When he awake again.

Love stays a summer night,
Till lights of morning come;
Then takes her wing'd flight...

I stood in the forest on HURON HILL
When the night was old and the world was still.

The Wind was a wizard who muttering strode
In a raven cloak on a haunted road.
...

Oh moon our fathers worshipped, their love discreet,
from the blue country's heights where the bright seraglio,
the stars in their sweet dress, go treading after you,
my ancient Cynthia, lamp of my retreat,
...

Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch, alas!
Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be...

The full, clear moon uprose and spread
Her cold, pale splendor o'er the sea;
A light-strewn path that seemed to lead
Outward into eternity.
Between the darkness and the gleam...

One night I lingered in the wood
And saw a spirit-form that stood
Among the wildflowers. Like the dew
It twinkled; partly wind and scent;
Then down a moonbeam there it blew,...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)
(What the Little Girl Said)


The Moon's the North Wind's cooky.
He bites it, day by day,
Until there's but a rim of scraps...

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
...

The Moper mopeth all the day;
He mopeth eke at night;
And never is the Moper gay,
But, grim and serious alway,
He is a sorry sight.

He liketh not the merry quip;
He hateth other men;...

You mustn't groom an Arab with a file.
You hadn't ought to tension-spring a mule.
You couldn't push a brumby fifty mile
And drop him in a boiler-shed to cool.
I'll sling you through six counties in a day....