Works

I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.
...

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
...

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
...

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
-Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,...

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
With a resounding call!

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries -...

She walks - the lady of my delight -
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant height,...

Three times have I beheld
Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,
Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.

What is it justifies...

Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?
Out of the long West did this wild wind come -
Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,
Ready and dumb, until...

"A riddling world!" one cried.
"If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
The holy innocent!"

But I, "Ah no, no, no!...

TO SHAKESPEARE

Longer than thine, than thine,
Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
O how ignoble this my clasp appears!
...

Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
Waved wild with boundless flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,-...

Thou who singest through the earth,
All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever...

Across what calm of tropic seas,
'Neath alien clusters of the nights,
Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!

The generations fostered them;...

Oh, not more subtly silence strays
Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,
And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.
...

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.
...

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.
...

The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the light, not towards it. Before Tintoretto's date, however, many painters practised shadows and lights, and turned more or less sunwards; but he set the figure bet...

Given, not lent,
And not withdrawn - once sent -
This Infant of mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.

New every year,
New-born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings and a song,...

Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,
Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat
With love of thine own kind;

Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,...

So humble things Thou hast borne for us, O God,
Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod?
Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden.
For we endure the tender pain of pardon,-...