Works

I Saw the day like some great monarch die,
Gold-couched, behind the clouds' rich tapestries.
Then, purple-sandaled, clad in silences
Of sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli,...

New paradise, and groom and bride;
The world was all their own;
Her heart swelled full of love and pride;
Yet were they quite alone?
'Now how is it, oh how is it, and why is it' (in fear...

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.
...

How baseless is the mightiest earthly pride,
The diamond is but charcoal purified,
The lordliest pearl that decks a monarch's breast
Is but an insect's sepulchre at best.

Earth! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth;...

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.

"Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den...

Earth's children cleave to Earth, her frail
Decaying children dread decay.
Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale,
And lessens in the morning ray:
Look, how, by mountain rivulet,...

Man, Earth's poor shadow! talks of Earth's decay:
But hath it nothing of eternal kin?
No majesty that shall not pass away?
No soul of greatness springing up within?...

Fame

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled thro' its binding osier-rods;...

April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.

The snow-melted torrents are brawling;...

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness"


The heart hath its moments of hopeless gloom,
As rayless as is the dark night of the tomb;
When the past has no spell, the future no ray,...

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time un-proved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed...

What is the soul? Is it the wind
Among the branches of the mind?
Is it the sea against Time's shore
Breaking and broken evermore?
Is it the shore that breaks Time's sea,
The verge of vast Eternity?...

You cannot take from out my heart the growing,
The green, sweet growing, and the vivid thrill.
"O Earth," you cry, "you should be old, not glowing
With youth and all youth's strength and beauty still!"
...

God gives to none so absolute an ease
As not to know or feel some grievances.

In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play,
And, 'Thirteen hundred years agone,' they say,
'Two saints met often where those waters flow.
...

The Day has never understood the Gloaming or the Night;
Though sired by one Creative Power, and nursed at Nature's breast;
The White Man ever fails to read the Dark Man's heart aright;...

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,...

The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.