Works

(To F. S.)

In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon
And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.
Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored...

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high,
In the glowing August sky,
Quenching all her neighbor stars,
Save the steady flame of Mars.
White as silver shines the sea,
Far-off sails like phantoms be,...

The solemn light behind the barns,
The rising moon, the cricket's call,
The August night, and you and I -
What is the meaning of it all!

Has it a meaning, after all?
Or is it one of Nature's lies,...

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.
...

I.

There's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen,
He's the king o' guid fellows and wale of auld men;
He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine,
And ae bonnie lassie, his darling and mine....

The thoughts of all the maples who shall name,
When the sad landscape turns to cold and grey?
Yet some for very ruth and sheer dismay,
Hearing the northwind pipe the winter's name,...

Since early this morning the world has seemed surging
With unworded rhythm, and rhyme without thought.
It may be the Muses take this way of urging
The patience and pains by which poems are wrought....

Avaunt all specious pliancy of mind
In men of low degree, all smooth pretense!
I better like a blunt indifference,
And self-respecting slowness, disinclined
To win me at first sight: and be there joined...

The coup d'etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.

'Greeting from those who are to die!...

Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke open bars and fell on Danae:
Or a dread vision as when Semele...

Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen,
Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat
Found, and each root malevolently fat
Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken...

Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport[570]


1.

The Moorish King rides up and down.
Through Granada's royal town:
From Elvira's gates to those...

"What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
And, you'll observe, our lives are rank lives too."
...

Store of courage to me grant,
Now I'm turn'd a combatant;
Help me, so that I my shield,
Fighting, lose not in the field.
That's the greatest shame of all
That in warfare can befall....

Goddess, I begin an art;
Come thou in, with thy best part
For to make the texture lie
Each way smooth and civilly;
And a broad-fac'd owl shall be
Offer'd up with vows to thee.

Oh! give me the strength of the Lion,
The wisdom of reynard the Fox
And then I'll hurl troops at the Germans
And give them the hardest of knocks.

Oh! think of the War Lord's mailed fist,...

Next morning in the Park I took a stroll.
A walk upon Mount Royal is a thing,
Glorious at any time, but most of all
At early morning in the opening spring,...

The son of him with whom we strove for power'
Whose will is lord thro' all his world-domain'
Who made the serf a man, and burst his chain'
Has given our prince his own imperial Flower,
Alexandrovna....

Oh! gladly do we welcome thee,
Fair pleasant month of May;
Month which we've eager longed to see,
Through many a wintry day:
And now with countless budding flowers,
With sunshine bright and clear -...

(For Fr. C. L. O'Donnell)


The interlacing trees
Arise in Gothic traceries,
As if a vast cathedral deep and dim;
And through the solemn atmosphere
The low winds hymn...