Works

"Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"

The merchant's word
Delighted the Master heard;...

The linnet's warble, sinking towards a close,
Hints to the thrush 'tis time for their repose;
The shrill-voiced thrush is heedless, and again
The monitor revives his own sweet strain;...

Long time his pulse hath ceased to beat
But benefits, his gift, we trace,
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.

To stately Hall and Cottage rude...

Sometimes we remember kisses,
Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
Not always, but sometimes we remember
The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
Of laughter and farewell.
...

By the stream I dream in calm delight, and watch as in a glass,
How the clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and white-robed maidens pass,
And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles as it spreads,...

Sunlight and shrill cicada and the low,
Slow, sleepy kissing of the sea and shore,
And rumor of the wind. The morning wore
A sullen face of fog that lifted slow,...

B.C. 570

(Macmillan's Magazine, October 1866.)


Here where I dwell I waste to skin and bone;
The curse is come upon me, and I waste
In penal torment powerless to atone....

Summer's face was rosiest, skies and woods were mellow,
Earth had heaven to friend, and heaven had earth to fellow,
When we met where wooded hills and meadows meet....

A scent of Esparto grass, and again I recall
That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill
Watching together the curving thunderous fall
Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until...

If we dream that desire of the distance above us
Should be fettered by fear of the shadows that seem,
If we wake, to be nought, but to hate or to love us
If we dream,...

Oft bend the bow, and thou with ease shalt do
What others can't with all their strength put to.

I.

Green, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim
Above the mystic vistas swim,
Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn,...

'Beneath the greenwood bough.'
- W. Scott.

Lightly the breath of the spring wind blows,
Though laden with faint perfume,
'Tis the fragrance rare that the bushman knows,...

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail,
I shall but love you more,
Who, from Death's House returning, give me still...

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,...

A peasant woman, a widow, had an only son, a young man of twenty, the best workman in the village, and he died.
...

If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea...

Radiant notes
piercing my narrow-chested room,
beating down through my ceiling -
smeared with unshapen
belly-prints of dreams
drifted out of old smokes -
trillions of icily
peltering notes...

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade
Where level branches of the plane...

The shepherds and the nymphs were seen
Pleading before the Cyprian queen.
The counsel for the fair began,
Accusing the false creature Man.
The brief with weighty crimes was charged...