Works

What woman hugs her infant there?
Another star has shot an ear.

What made the drapery glisten so?
Not a man but Delacroix.

What made the ceiling waterproof?
Landor's tarpaulin on the roof...

The Babe was laid in the Manger
Between the gentle kine,
All safe from cold and danger,
"But it was not so with mine,
(With mine! With mine!)
"Is it well with the child, is it well?"...

There was once a little comet who lived near the Milky Way!
She loved to wander out at night and jump about and play.
The mother of the comet was a very good old star -...

Some things are good on Autumn nights,
When with the storm the forest fights,
And in the room the heaped hearth lights
Old-fashioned press and rafter:
Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,...

And doth not a meeting like this make amends,
For all the long years I've been wandering away--
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?...

'"And if your Nancy frowns, my lad,
And scorns a jacket blue,
Just hoist your sails for other ports,
And find a maid more true."'

"And there shall be no night there and they
need no candle, and neither light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them Light."


Your place is Heaven, a stormless nightless home?...

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator
May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on
Words from man to son, from one tongue
To others' lips, un-
Knowingly, like a father who passes on...

All the stream that's roaring by
Came out of a needle's eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
From needle's eye still goad it on.

We've mooast on us, at one 'time or another, accidentally dropt amang company withaat havin ony idea o' spendin mich time wi' em, an' yet we've kept stoppin an' stoppin, feelin as happy as con be, an' niver thinkin for a minit ...

Why lad, awm sewer tha'rt ommost done,
This ovvertime is killin;
'Twor allus soa sin th' world begun,
They put o' them at's willin.
Tha's ne'er a neet to call thi own, -
Tha starts furst thing o' Mundy,...

Seen my lady home las' night,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,...

I find an old deserted nest,
Half-hidden in the underbrush:
A withered leaf, in phantom jest,
Has nestled in it like a thrush
With weary, palpitating breast.

I muse as one in sad surprise...

Dulce est desipere in loco.

I

Some Folks are drunk, yet do not know it:
So might not Bacchus give You Law?
Was it a Muse, O lofty Poet,
Or Virgin of St. Cyr, You saw?...

The train of equipage and pomp of state,
The shining sideboard and the burnish'd plate,
Let other ministers, great Anne, require,
And partial fall thy gift to their desire....

We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here
To take up Lord Tennyson's mission.
'Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer,
And a man of exalted position....

[What the Man of Faith said]


The dew, the rain and moonlight
All prove our Father's mind.
The dew, the rain and moonlight
Descend to bless mankind.

Come, let us see that all men...

I know myself no more, my child,
Since thou art come to me,
Pity so tender and so wild
Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.

These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,
Are from the Mother shed,...

An age too great for thought of ours to scan,
A wave upon the sleepless sea of time
That sinks and sleeps for ever, ere the chime
Pass that salutes with blessing, not with ban,...

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims within his ken."

I who had sought afar from earth
The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,...