Works

Our sister sayeth such and such,
And we must bow to her behests.
Our sister toileth overmuch,
Our little maid that hath no breasts.

A field untilled, a web unwove,...

"These were never your true love's eyes.
Why do you feign that you love them?
You that broke from their constancies,
And the wide calm brows above them!

This was never your true love's speech....

Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
"Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King, the King we schooled aforetime! "...

This is our lot if we live so long and labour unto the end,
Then we outlive the impatient years and the much too patient friend:...

She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew
For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through.
The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam,...

England is a cosy little country,
Excepting for the draughts along the floor.
And that is why you're told,
When the passages are cold:
'Darling, you've forgot to shut the Door!'
...

When the earth was sick and the skies were grey,
And the woods were rotted with rain,
The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
To visit his love again.

His love she neither saw nor heard,...

Through learned and laborious years
They set themselves to find
Fresh terrors and undreamed-of fears
To heap upon mankind.

ALl that they drew from Heaven above
Or digged from earth beneath,...

In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day,
We exiles are waiting for letters from Home....

When I was a King and a Mason, a Master proven and skilled,
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,...

We've rode and fought and ate and drunk as rations* come to hand,
Together for a year and more around this stinkin' land:
Now you are goin' home again, but we must see it through....

The Word came down to Dives in Torment where he lay:
"Our World is full of wickedness, My Children maim and slay,
"And the Saint and Seer and Prophet
"Can make no better of it...

Once in life I watched a Star;
But I whistled, "Let her go!
There are others, fairer far,
Which my favouring skies shall show
Here I lied, and herein I
Stood to pay the penalty.
...

When Rome was rotten-ripe to her fall,
And the sceptre passed from her hand,
The pestilent Picts leaped over the wall
To harry the English land.

The little dark men of the mountain and waste,...

She is not Folly, that I know.
Her steadfast eyelids tell me so
When, at the hour the lights divide,
She steals as summonsed to my side.

When, finger on the pursed lip...

Too late, alas! the song
To remedy the wrong;
The rooms are taken from us, swept and
garnished for their fate.
But these tear-besprinkled pages
Shall attest to future ages...

0h, late withdrawn from human-kind
And following dreams we never knew!
Varus, what dream has Fate assigned
To trouble you?

Such virtue as commends of law
Of Virtue to the vulgar horde...

Though tangled and twisted the course of true love
This ditty explains,
No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve
If the Lover has brains.


...

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware...

I see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand,
I see a river loop and run about a treeless land,
An empty plain, a steely pond, a distance diamond-clear,...