Works

Except to heaven, she is nought;
Except for angels, lone;
Except to some wide-wandering bee,
A flower superfluous blown;

Except for winds, provincial;
Except by butterflies,...

Excess is sluttish: keep the mean; for why?
Virtue's clean conclave is sobriety.

All that I had I brought,
Little enough I know;
A poor rhyme roughly wrought,
A rose to match thy snow:
All that I had I brought.

Little enough I sought:
But a word compassionate,...

Out of the mercury shimmer of glass
Over these daguerreotypes
The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges
With its little figure of flowers.
And the enameled glair of parted hair...

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling...

I wonder, can the night go by;
Can this shot arrow of travel fly
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky
Of a dawned to-morrow,
Without ever sleep delivering us...

I too have suffer'd: yet I know
She is not cold, though she seems so:
She is not cold, she is not light;
But our ignoble souls lack might.

She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,...

Thou dost complain of woman for changing from one to another?

Censure her not: for she seeks one who will constant remain.

HELEN RABY.

Where the grave-deeps rot, where the grave-dews rust,
They dug, crying, 'Earth to earth',
Crying, 'Ashes to ashes and dust to dust',
And what are my poor prayers worth?...

I

Everybody else, then, going,
And I still left where the fair was? . . .
Much have I seen of neighbour loungers
Making a lusty showing,
Each now past all knowing.

II
...

Prologue

Calm and clear! the bright day is declining,
The crystal expanse of the bay,
Like a shield of pure metal, lies shining
'Twixt headlands of purple and grey,...

What various hindrances we meet
In coming to a mercy-seat!
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer,
But wishes to be often there?


Prayer makes the darken'd cloud withdraw,...

By the sad waters of separation
Where we have wandered by divers ways,
I have but the shadow and imitation
Of the old memorial days.

In music I have no consolation,...

Had the gods loved me I had lain
Where darnel is, and thorn,
And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain
Trembles in boughs forlorn.

Nay, but they loved me not; and I
Must needs a stranger be,...

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness...

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sign'd, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.
...

You are here, and you are wanted,
Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing...

"Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abitis in loca?"

Cease, Wind, to blow
And drive the peopled snow,
And move the haunted arras to and fro,
And moan of things I fear to know...

Farewell to the feast-day! the pray'r book is stained
With tears; of the booth scarce a trace has remained;
The lime branch is withered, the osiers are dying,
And pale as a corpse the fair palm-frond is lying;...

O'er the tears that we shed, dear
The bitter vines twist,
And the hawk and the red deer
They keep where we kiss'd:
All broken lies the shieling
That sheltered from rain,...