Works

Down the stone stairs
Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy
Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion up at me.
And I smile.

Ladies
Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet...

Father

Have you spent the money I gave you to-day?

John

Ay, father I have.
A fourpence on cakes, two pennies that away
To a beggar I gave.

Father
...

So we, who 've supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged--ah, well,...

Laurence Raby's Chamber. LAURENCE enters, a little the worse for liquor.

Laurence:
He never gave me a chance to speak,
And he call'd her, worse than a dog,
The girl stood up with a crimson cheek,...

After the Sea-Ship--after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,...

France, cloven in twain by fire of hell and hate,
Shamed with the shame of men her meanest born,
Soldier and judge whose names, inscribed for scorn,
Stand vilest on the record writ of fate,...

(To F. E. D.)



Come again to the place
Where your presence was as a leaf that skims
Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims
The bloom on the farer's face.

Come again, with the feet...

Last Post sounded
Across the mead
To where he loitered
With absent heed.
Five years before
In the evening there
Had flown that call
To him and his Dear.
"You'll never come back;...

As eager homebound traveller to the goal,
Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main,
Or martyr panting for an aureole,
My fellow-pilgrims pass me, and attain
That hidden mansion of perpetual peace...

I.

Who follows Jesus shall not walk
In darksome road with danger rife;
But in his heart the Truth will talk,
And on his way will shine the Life.

So, on the story we must pore...

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;...

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. -Vain sympathies!
For backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;...

Illius est nobis lege colendus amor

On her own terms, O lover, must thou take
The heart's beloved: be she kind, 'tis well,
Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake...

Another night has turned itself to day,
Another day has melted into eve,
And lo! again I tread the measured way
Of word and thought, the twain to interweave,
As flowers absorb the rays that they receive....

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,...

On the field of Waterloo we made Napoleon rue
That ever out of Elba he decided for to come,
For we finished him that day, and he had to run away,
And yield himself to Maitland on the Billy-ruffium.
...

I think that though the clouds be dark,
That though the waves dash o'er the bark,
Yet after while the light will come,
And in calm waters safe at home
The bark will anchor....

Press close your lips,
And bow your heads to earth, for Death is here!
Mark ye not how across that eye so clear,
Steals his eclipse?

A moment more,...

What vague traditions do the golden eves,
What legends do the dawns
Inscribe in fire on Heaven's azure leaves,
The red sun colophons?

What ancient stories do the waters verse?...

Lord, when Thou seest that my work is done,
Let me not linger on,
With failing powers,
Adown the weary hours,--
A workless worker in a world of work.
But, with a word,
Just bid me home,...