Works

I hear the wintry wind again,
I see the blinding snow,
Pil'd high, by eddying winds, in heaps,
No matter where I go.

The storm is raging hard, without;
But let us not complain,...

In that great journey of the stars through space
About the mighty, all-directing Sun,
The pallid, faithful Moon has been the one
Companion of the Earth. Her tender face,...

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,...

In the dim and distant ages, in the half-forgotten days,
Ere the East became the fashion and an Indian tour the craze,
Lived a certain Major-General, renowned throughout the State...

Our home used to be in a hut in the dear old Camp, with lots of bands and trumpets and bugles and Dead Marches, and three times a day there was a gun,...

Just from the sentry's tramp
(I must take it again at ten),
I have laid my musket down,
And seized instead my pen;
For, pacing my lonely round
In the chilly twilight gray,...

Now as Heaven is my Lot, they're the Pests of the Nation!
Wherever they can come
With clankum and blankum
'Tis all Botheration, & Hell & Damnation,
With fun, jeering
Conjuring
Sky-staring,...

Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand,
Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow
Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow,
Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland...

Long, long ago, in that heroic time
When I, a coy and modest youth, was shot
Out on this dust-heap of careers and crime
To try and learn what's what,

I had a servitor, a swarthy knave,...

Thou art the soul of a summer's day,
Thou art the breath of the rose.
But the summer is fled
And the rose is dead
Where are they gone, who knows, who knows?
...

(For John McCormack)


June of the trees in glory,
June of the meadows gay!
O, and it works a story
To tell an October day.

Blooms of the apple and cherry...

I am as weary as a child
That weeps upon its mother's breast
For joy of comforting. But I
Have no such place to rest.

I am as weary as a bird
Blown by wild winds far out to sea...

Love maketh its own summer time,
'Tis June, Love, when we are together,
And little I care for the frost in the air,
For the heart makes its own summer weather.

Love maketh its own winter time,...

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,...

I Thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

Though I have many words,...

The Shape alone let others prize,
The Features of the Fair;
I look for Spirit in her Eyes,
And Meaning in her Air.
A Damask Cheek, an Iv'ry Arm,
Shall ne'er my Wishes win,
Give me an animated Form,...

Sweet dreams, form a shade
O'er my lovely infant's head!
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams
By happy, silent, moony beams!

Sweet Sleep, with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown...

I've a kiss from a warmer lover
Than maiden earth can be:
She blew it up to the skies above her,
And now it has come to me;
From the far-away it has come today
With a breath of the old salt sea.
...

Gentle nymphs, be not refusing,
Love's neglect is time's abusing,
They and beauty are but lent you;
Take the one and keep the other;
Love keeps fresh what age doth smother;...

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray...