Works

The cat she walks on padded claws,
The wolf on the hills lays stealthy paws,
Feathered birds in the rain-sweet sky
At their ease in the air, flit low, flit high.
...

"Who called?" I said, and the words
Through the whispering glades,
Hither, thither, baffled the birds -
"Who called? Who called?"

The leafy boughs on high
Hissed in the sun;...

No lovelier hills than thine have laid
My tired thoughts to rest:
No peace of lovelier valleys made
Like peace within my breast.

Thine are the woods whereto my soul,
Out of the noontide beam,...

Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.

The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;...

There clung three roses to a stem,
Did all their hues of summer don,
But came a wind and troubled them,
And all were gone.

I heard three bells in unison
Clap out some transient heart's delight,...

No one was with me there -
Happy I was - alone;
Yet from the sunshine suddenly
A joy was gone.

A bird in an empty house
Sad echoes makes to ring,
Flitting from room to room...

When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl...

I laid my inventory at the hand
Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate;
And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love singing in that quiet land.
He read the record even to the end -...

Had the gods loved me I had lain
Where darnel is, and thorn,
And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain
Trembles in boughs forlorn.

Nay, but they loved me not; and I
Must needs a stranger be,...

O strange devices that alone divide
The se'r from the seen -
The very highway of earth's pomp and pride
That lies between
The traveller and the cheating, sweet delight
Of where he longs to be,...

The words you said grow faint;
The lamp you lit burns dim;
Yet, still be near your faithless friend
To urge and counsel him.

Still with returning feet
To where life's shadows brood,...

'Twas in a tavern that with old age stooped
And leaned rheumatic rafters o'er his head -
A blowzed, prodigious man, which talked, and stared,
And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye...

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?...

I know where lurk
The eyes of Fear;
I, I alone,
Where shadowy-clear,
Watching for me,
Lurks Fear.

'Tis ever still
And dark, despite
All singing and
All candlelight,...

In Hans' old Mill his three black cats
Watch the bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:...

For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me...

Thou canst not see him standing by -
Time - with a poppied hand
Stealing thy youth's simplicity,
Even as falls unceasingly
His waning sand.

He will pluck thy childish roses, as...

One night as Dick lay half asleep,
Into his drowsy eyes
A great still light begins to creep
From out the silent skies.
It was lovely moon's, for when
He raised his dreamy head,...

Upon a bank, easeless with knobs of gold,
Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke,
I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold,
With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke,
Who stares upon the daylight in despair...

Still as a mountain with dark pines and sun
He stood between the armies, and his shout
Rolled from the empyrean above the host:
"Bid any little flea ye have come forth,...