Works

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day...

The poor man weeps, here Gavin sleeps,
Whom canting wretches blam'd:
But with such as he, where'er he be,
May I be sav'd or damn'd!

They cheered him from the wharf, it was a glorious day:
His hand went to his scarf, his thoughts were far away.
Oh, he was 'Jolly Good', they sang it long and loud,...

They were a couple well content
With what they earned and what they spent,
Cared not a whit for style's decree -
For he was Scotch, and so was she.

And oh, they loved to talk of Burns -...

For him I sing,
I raise the Present on the Past,
(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:)
With time and space I him dilate--and fuse the immortal laws,...

Work with might and main,
Or with hand and heart,
Work with soul and brain,
Or with holy art,
Thread, or genius' fire--
Make a vest, or verse--
If 'tis done for hire,
It is done the worse.

For Life I had never cared greatly,
As worth a man's while;
Peradventures unsought,
Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
Unwon by its style....

(AFTER SIR E. A.)

1. From the third Sa'dine Box of the eighth Gazelle of Ghazal.

Ya Ya! Best-Beloved! I look to thy dimples and drink;
Tiddlihi! to thy cheek-pits and chin-pit, my Tulip, my Pink!...

The miser lay on his lonely bed;
Life's candle was burning dim.
His heart in an iron chest was hid
Under heaps of gold and an iron lid;
And whether it were alive or dead
It never troubled him.
...

Health is the first good lent to men;
A gentle disposition then:
Next, to be rich by no by-ways;
Lastly, with friends t' enjoy our days.

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE AND MOST VERTUOUS LADIES, THE LADIE MARGARET, COUNTESSE OF CUMBERLAND; AND THE LADIE MARIE*, COUNTESSE OF WARWICK.

...

When Samson set my brush afire
To spoil the Timnites barley,
I made my point for Leicestershire
And left Philistia early.
Through Gath and Rankesborough Gorse I fled,
And took the Coplow Road, sir!...

Thy beauty hangs around thee like
Splendour around the moon -
Thy voice, as silver bells that strike
Upon

It was a day of sombre heat:
The still, dense air was void of sound
And life; no wing of bird did beat
A little breeze through it, the ground
Was like live ashes to the feet....

Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,
The least of which wronged Memory ever makes
Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.

How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;
How virtue and vice blend their black and their white;
How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,...

I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret
Which overlooked a wide Metropolis -
And in the temple of my heart my Spirit
Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss
The dust of Desolations [altar] hearth -...

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air (but no relief
To seek, - or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought); - to wonder that a chief...

God of mercy without measure!
God of all-embracing love!
Show'ring in Thy gracious pleasure
Countless blessings from above;
Bounteous benefits bestowing
In a kind, continuous course,...

Blest infant of eternity!
Before the day-star learned to move,
In pomp of fire, along his grand career,
Glancing the beamy shafts of light

From his rich quiver to the farthest sphere,...