Works

Julia, if I chance to die
Ere I print my poetry,
I most humbly thee desire
To commit it to the fire:
Better 'twere my book were dead,
Than to live not perfected.

From the dull confines of the drooping west
To see the day spring from the pregnant east,
Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly
To thee, blest place of my nativity!...

"I'm home again, my dear old Room,
I'm home again, and happy, too,
As, peering through the brightening gloom,
I find myself alone with you:
Though brief my stay, nor far away,...

Along the hot and endless road,
Calm and erect, with haggard eyes,
The prisoner bore his fetters' load
Beneath the scorching, azure skies.

Serene and tall, with brows unbent,...

When that day comes, whose evening says I'm gone
Unto that watery desolation;
Devoutly to thy Closet-gods then pray,
That my wing'd ship may meet no Remora.
Those deities which circum-walk the seas,...

Have, have ye no regard, all ye
Who pass this way, to pity Me,
Who am a man of misery!

A man both bruis'd, and broke, and one
Who suffers not here for Mine own,
But for My friends' transgression!...

Perhaps in some respects it's true
That you resemble dad;
To be informed I look like you
Would never make me mad.
But one thing I am sure of, son,
You have a different line...

Once from the world of living men
I passed, by a strange fancy led,
To a still City of the Dead,
To call upon a citizen.

He had been famous in his day;
Much talked of, written of, and praised...

I send, I send here my supremest kiss
To thee, my silver-footed Thamesis.
No more shall I reiterate thy Strand,
Whereon so many stately structures stand:
Nor in the summer's sweeter evenings go...

An Epilogue, through custom, is your right,
But ne'er perhaps was needful till this night:
To-night the virtuous falls, the guilty flies,
Guilt's dreadful close our narrow scene denies....

The listless beauty of the hour
When snow fell on the apple trees
And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
And we faced our first miseries.

Then the sweeping sunshine of noon...

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had,
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,...

Close the book and dim the light,
I shall read no more to-night.
No - I am not sleepy, dear -
Do not go: sit by me here
In the darkness and the deep
Silence of the watch I keep....

I had a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking. A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bendi...

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker
To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:
I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,...

I cannot suffer; and in this my part
Of patience wants. Grief breaks the stoutest heart.

Cry "Murder" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbour anxious eyes
Asking: "Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
Some centuries ago across the world....

Come thou, who art the wine and wit
Of all I've writ;
The grace, the glory, and the best
Piece of the rest;
Thou art of what I did intend
The All, and End;
And what was made, was made to meet....

It is sufficient if we pray
To Jove, who gives and takes away:
Let him the land and living find;
Let me alone to fit the mind.

I would to God, that mine old age might have
Before my last, but here a living grave;
Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir,
Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre;
A little piggin, and a pipkin by,...