Works

Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,
Gentle, resistless, welling, welling, welling;
Through what blind ways, we know not whence
You darkling come to dance and dimple -
Strange little spring!...

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
...

Musician, with the bent and brooding face,
White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing
Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

Musician, with the lifted resolute face,...

Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,...

Italian bold, why wilt thou never cease
The fathers from their tombs to summon forth?
Why bring them, with this dead age to converse,
That stifled is by enemies and by sloth?...

Old Mate! In the gusty old weather,
When our hopes and our troubles were new,
In the years spent in wearing out leather,
I found you unselfish and true,
I have gathered these verses together...

Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free,...

"Sermons in stones."


Who were you once? Could we but guess,
We might perchance more boldly
Define the patient weariness
That sets your lips so coldly;...

Lie Philo untouch'd, on my peaceable shelf,
Nor take it amiss that so little I heed thee;
I've no envy to thee, and some love to myself:
Then why should I answer since first I must read thee?...

(MAY 17, 1864)
(See Note 26)

'Twas then this land of ours we drew
From centuries of ice and sorrow,
And let it of the sun's warmth borrow,
And law and plow brought order new;...

(What the Ghosts Said)


And after all the labour and the pains,
After the heaping up of gold on gold,
After success that locked your feet in chains,
And left you with a heart so tired and old,...

You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give...

My pretty flower,
How cam'st thou here?
Around thee all
Is sad and sere,
The brown leaves tell
Of winter's breath,
And all but thou
Of doom and death.

The naked forest...

Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me,
wide enough for the sweetest white girl's envy:
to the wise artist your body is sweet and dear,
and your great velvet eyes black without peer....

Young mother! proudly throbs thine heart, and well may it rejoice,
Well may'st thou raise to Heaven above in grateful prayer thy voice:
A gift hath been bestowed on thee, a gift of priceless worth,...

Let's now take our time,
While we're in our prime,
And old, old age is afar off;
For the evil, evil days
Will come on apace,
Before we can be aware of.

My love
Has told me
That he needs me.

That's why
I take good care of myself
Watch out where I'm going and
Fear that any drop of rain
Might kill me.

With sordid floods the wintry Urn
Hath stain'd fair Richmond's level green:
Her naked hill the Dryads mourn,
No longer a poetic scene.
No longer there thy raptur'd eye...

From the Gentleman's London Magazine for January.

My lines to him you give; to speak your due,
'Tis what no man alive will say of you.
Your works are like old Jacob's speckled goats,...

Mordanto fills the trump of fame,
The Christian world his deeds proclaim,
And prints are crowded with his name.

In journeys he outrides the post,
Sits up till midnight with his host,...