Works

TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.


Song wakes with every wakening year
From hearts of birds that only feel
Brief spring's deciduous flower-time near:
And song more strong to help or heal...

Like a queen enchanted who may not laugh or weep,
Glad at heart and guarded from change and care like ours,
Girt about with beauty by days and nights that creep...

There are sleeping dreams and waking dreams;
What seems is not always as it seems.

I looked out of my window in the sweet new morning,
And there I saw three barges of manifold adorning...

The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
And sorrowful old age that comes by night
As a thief comes that has no heart by day,...

Clothes and the Man I sing. Reformers, note
These of the Subaltern who owned a Coat.

He was what veterans miscall, for short,
By that objectionable term, a wart:[1]
...

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;...

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,...

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told...

France tells the story, make our hearts know well,
Christ His Figure stands against the gates of hell:
Flame and shot may rive the fortress walls apart,
Christ the Crucified will heal the breaking heart.
...

Ye who heed a nation's call
And speed to arms therefor,
Ye who fear your children's march
To perils of the war,--
Soldiers of the deck and camp
And mothers of our men,
Hearken to a tale of France...

One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and strait
You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
And loosed an idle hour to kill...

It fell in the year of Mutiny,
At darkest of the night,
John Nicholson by Jal'ndhar came,
On his way to Delhi fight.

And as he by Jal'ndhar came,
He thought what he must do,...

We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,
And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull;
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,...

I.

There are three kisses that I call to mind,
And I will sing their secrets as I go.
The first, a kiss too courteous to be kind,
Was such a kiss as monks and maidens know;...

I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
In midst whereof there was
A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,...

Ah, London! London! our delight,
Great flower that opens but at night,
Great City of the Midnight Sun,
Whose day begins when day is done.

Lamp after lamp against the sky...

'What ails you that you look so pale,
O fisher of the sea?'
''Tis for a mournful tale I own,
Fair maiden Marjorie.'

'What is the dreary tale to tell,
O toiler of the sea?'...

Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.

No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,...

The lady stood at the station bar,
(Three currants in a bun)
And oh she was proud, as ladies are.
(And the bun was baked a week ago.)

For a weekly wage she was standing there,...

High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant's hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold...