Works

I woke at midnight, and my heart,
My beating heart, said this to me:
Thou seest the moon, how calm and bright!
The world is fair by day and night,
But what is that to thee?...

'Tis strange 'at fowk will be sich fooils
To mak life net worth livin',
Fermentin' rows, creatin' mooils,
Detractin' an' deceivin'.
To fratch an' worry day an' neet,
Is sewerly wilful blindness,...

Written on a blank leaf of his memoirs.


Dear friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn!
...

What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil;
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines
For all the heat o' the day, till it declines,
And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil....

What though the heart be tired,
The heart, that long aspired,
And one high dream desired,
Beyond attainment's scope;
Beyond our grasp; above us;
The dream we would have love us,...

Mine is the shape forever set between
The thought and form, the vision and the deed;
The hidden light, the glory all unseen,
I bring to mortal senses, mortal need.
...

Yet life is not a vision nor a prayer,
But stubborn work; she may not shun her task.
After the first compassion, none will spare
Her portion and her work achieved, to ask....

Like coral insects multitudinous
The minutes are whereof our life is made.
They build it up as in the deep's blue shade
It grows, it comes to light, and then, and thus
For both there is an end. The populous...

Not to the Arch-Idler be the honor given
Of first inventing work, but to his Lord,
Who made the light, the firmament of heaven,
And sun and moon and planets in accord,
The land and cattle on it, and the sea...

The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel...

Bonny lads, and bonny lasses!
Work away! work away!
Think how swift each moment passes,
Time does never stay.
Then let's up and to our labours,
They who will, must sure succeed,...

Two Chinese fellows approached me in a London suburb.
They were eager for talk.

"Karl Marx's tomb," they implored, "directions to the tomb,
please." They were pronouncing "tomb" as if it rhymed with home....

Work if tha can, it's thi duty to labor;
If able, show willin, - ther's plenty to do,
Ther's battles to feight withaat musket or sabre,
But if tha'll have pluck tha'll be safe to pool throo.
...

(See Note 74)

Left foot! Right foot! Lines unbroken!
Keeping time is power's token.
That makes one of many, many,
That makes bold, if fear daunts any,
That makes small the load and lighter,...

"Work, neighbor, work!
Do not stop to play;
Wander far and wide,
Gather all you may.

We are never like
Idle butterflies,
But like the busy bees,
Industrious and wise."

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!...

Across the street, an humble woman lives;
To her 'tis little fortune ever gives;
Denied the wines of life, it puzzles me
To know how she can laugh so cheerily.
This morn I listened to her softly sing,...

Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,
Our freedom for a little bread we sell,...

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,
Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,
Above me glimmer, infinitely high,
Towards my giant hand a beetle walks...

World, take good notice, silver stars fading,
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching,
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,...