Works

To help our tired hope to toil,
Lo! have we not the council here
Of trees, that to all hope appear
As sermons of the soil?

To help our flagging faith to rise,
Lo! have we not the high advice...

That is solemn we have ended, --
Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,
Parting with a world
We have understood, for better...

reads like
living down -
a coconut arriving with the tide,
bottles perched in sand
the blue glass
colour or imprisoned dreams
genie of a bottle cap.

Ending up....

New days are dear, and cannot be unloved,
Though in deep grief we mourn, and cling to death;
Who has not known, in living on, a breath
Of infinite joy that has life's rapture proved?
...

Oh, I used to sing a song,
An' dey said it was too long,
So I cut it off de en'
To accommodate a frien'
Nex' do', nex' do'
To accommodate a frien' nex' do'.

But it made de matter wuss...

You were here at his young beginning,
You are not here at his aged end;
Off he coaxed you from Life's mad spinning,
Lest you should see his form extend
Shivering, sighing,
Slowly dying,...

"Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor." I Samuel, xxviii. 7.


The road to En-dor is easy to tread
For Mother or yearning Wife.
There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead...

It's a long loin 'at's niver a turn, an' th' longest loin ends somewhear. Ther's a end to mooast things, an' this is th' end o' the year. When a chap gets turned o' forty, years dooant seem as long as once they did - he begins ...

He bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away
The life that had been light to him,...

The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep...

O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears...

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!...

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;...

The apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me....

We have no grass locked up in ice so fast
That cattle cut their faces and at last,
When it is reached, must lie them down and starve,
With bleeding mouths that freeze too hard to move....

Praise thou with praise unending,
The Master of the Wine;
To all their portions sending
Himself he mingled thine:

The sea-born flush of morning,
The sea-born hush of night,...

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,...

Where'er I go in this dense East,
In sunshine or shade,
I retch at the villainous feast
That England has made.

And my shame cannot understand,
As scorn springs elate,...

O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,...