Works

Thou wast hard pressed, yet God concealed this thing
From me; and thou wast wounded very sore,
And beaten down, O son of Israel's king,
Like wheat on threshing-flour.
...

Young men will love thee more fair and more fast;
Heard ye so merry the little bird sing?
Old men's love the longest will last,
And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing.
...

Suppose it is nothing but the hive:
That there are drones and workers
And queens, and nothing but storing honey -
(Material things as well as culture and wisdom) -...

There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore,
They are chanting, they are singing through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence,
And the shadows of the shore.
...

Comes the British bulldog first, solid as a log,
He's so ugly in repose that he's a handsome dog;
Full of mild benevolence as his years increase;
Silent as a china dog on the mantelpiece....

Over the hill and over the dale,
And over the bourn to Dawlish,
Where gingerbread wives have a scanty sale
And gingerbread nuts are smallish.

Rantipole Betty she ran down a hill...

An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.

(From the train between Bologna and Milan, second class.)


Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat.
Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.
We have been here for ever: even yet...

Reveille sang its call among the barracks' paths,
And moving air disturbed the tall, commanding lamps.

It was the time when dreams of lust and swarming heat...

The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
Again, with waking life along its way,
The landscape marches westward mile on mile
And time throbs white into another day.
...

Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
Burns on the shadowy rim.

Moments that holds all moments; white upon...

When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It 's time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care...

I.

Mist on the mountain height
Silvery creeping;
Incarnate beads of light
Bloom-cradled sleeping,
Dripped from the brow of Night.


II.

Shadows, and winds that rise...

I cannot echo the old wish to die at morn, as darkness strays!
We have been glad together greeting some new-born radiant days,
The earth would hold me, every day familiar things
Would weigh me fast,...

The waters leap,
The waters roar;
And on the shore
One sycamore
Stands, towering hoar.

The mountains heap
Gaunt pines and crags
That hoar-frost shags;
And, pierced with snags,...

I.

Dawn, noon and dewfall! Bluebird and robin
Up and at it airly, and the orchard-blossoms bobbin'!
Peekin' from the winder, half-awake, and wishin'
I could go to sleep agin as well as go a-fishin'!...

I hear a twittering of birds,
And now they burst in song.
How sweet, although it wants the words!
It shall not want them long,
For I will set some to the note
Which bubbles from the thrush's throat....

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."

We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness
With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,...

Wind, just arisen -
(Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss
In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars,
Or niche of cliff under the eagles?)
You of living things,
So gay and tender and full of play -...

The gray dawn on the mountain top
Is slow to pass away.
Still lays him by in sluggish dreams,
The golden God of day.

And then a light along the hills,
Your laughter silvery gay;...