Works

My New-Cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare.
By my own work before the night,
Great Overseer, I make my prayer.

If there be good in that I wrought...

TOM, DICK, and WILL, were little known to Fame;--
No matter;--
But to the Ale-house, oftentimes, they came,
To chatter.

It was the custom of these three
To sit up late;...

My nosegays are for captives;
Dim, long-expectant eyes,
Fingers denied the plucking,
Patient till paradise,

To such, if they should whisper
Of morning and the moor,
They bear no other errand,...

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
...

We strolled down by the river side,
My sister Nell and I,
To watch the waters onward glide,
And vessels passing by.

On Nature's floor of lovely green,
Bedecked with flowers of gold,...

i

My spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way;
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.

ii

`A fathomless and boundless deep,...

My spirit will not haunt the mound
Above my breast,
But travel, memory-possessed,
To where my tremulous being found
Life largest, best.

My phantom-footed shape will go
When nightfall grays...

I sit by the fire musing,
With sad and downcast eye,
And my laden breast gives utt'rance
To many a weary sigh;
Hushed is each worldly feeling,
Dimmed is each day-dream bright -...

'Go, wash thyself in Jordan, go, wash thee and be clean! '
Nay, not for any Prophet will I plunge a toe therein!
For the banks of curious Jordan are parcelled into sites,...

See, he sitteth on his mat
Sitteth there upright,
With the grace with which he sat
While he saw the light.

Where is now the sturdy gripe,
Where the breath sedate,...

Tune - "Naebody."


I.

I hae a wife o' my ain,
I'll partake wi' naebody;
I'll tak cuckold frae nane,
I'll gie cuckold to naebody.
I hae a penny to spend,...

Even the beauteous must die! This vanquishes men and immortals;
But of the Stygian god moves not the bosom of steel.
Once and once only could love prevail on the ruler of shadows,...

All day the waves assailed the rock,
I heard no church-bell chime,
The sea-beat scorns the minster clock
And breaks the glass of Time.

Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,
So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,
Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished
Bronze of sea-grasses....

The leaves on their trumpet flames
Richter scale inside pulse stems -
into the gorge, la gorge
throat and crevice
of the canyon arroyo.

Walking the slit
into rheumatism earth...

But where's the brown drifter that went out alone?
--Roll and go, and fare you well--
Was her name Peggy Nutten? That name is my own.
Fare you well, my sailor....

Across bleak widths of broken sea
A fierce north-easter breaks,
And makes a thunder on the lea
A whiteness of the lakes.
Here, while beyond the rainy stream
The wild winds sobbing blow,...

The ghost of a wind came over the hill,
While day for a moment forgot to die,
And stirred the sheaves
Of the millet leaves,
As Nancibel went by.

Out of the lands of Long Ago,...

I.

Thine am I, my faithful fair,
Thine, my lovely Nancy;
Ev'ry pulse along my veins,
Ev'ry roving fancy.

II.

To thy bosom lay my heart,
There to throb and languish:...

You ask me, dear Nancy, what makes me presume
That you cherish a secret affection for me?
When we see the Flow'rs bud, don't we look for the Bloom?
Then, sweetest, attend, while I answer to thee.
...