Works

This is our place of meeting; opposite
That towered and pillared building: look at it;
King's Chapel in the Second George's day,
Rebellion stole its regal name away, -...

. . . One rises now and speaks: "The Cause is one -
Labour o'er all the earth! Shan't we, then, share
With these, whose very flesh and blood's our own,
All that we can of what we have and are?
...

A little crippled figure, two big pathetic eyes,
A face that looked unchildish, so wan it was and wise;
I watched her as the homesick tears came chasing down each cheek....

(To the Memory of Austin Dobson)

Master of the lyric inn
Where the rarer sort so long
Drew the rein, to 'scape the din
Of the cymbal and the gong,
Topers of the classic bin, -...

"At the Sign of the Lyre,"
Good Folk, we present you
With the pick of our quire,
And we hope to content you!

Here be Ballad and Song,
The fruits of our leisure,
Some short and some long--...

It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below
But the things of this world are a fleeting show.

The postchaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;...

Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
Over the stile the stars a-winking;
He thought it was Mary, 't was Mary's sister
And love hath a way of thinking.
...

Sister, we bid you welcome, - we who stand
On the high table-land;
We who have climbed life's slippery Alpine slope,
And rest, still leaning on the staff of hope,
Looking along the silent Mer de Glace,...

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

At The Summit Of The Washington Monument.

Look North! A white-clad city fills
This valley to its sloping hills;
Here gleams the modest house of white,...

A lilt and a swing,
And a ditty to sing,
Or ever the night grow old;
The wine is within,
And I 'm sure 't were a sin
For a soldier to choose to be cold, my dear,
For a soldier to choose to be cold....

Ting-ling--"South, please, 1085;
Why hello, Jim--Oh, Saints alive!
It's south, I told you--hello; no,
I said once that I could not go.

"Say, can you meet me there tonight?...

I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame,
Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast,
Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast
Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame....

'Twas in a tug-of-war where I, the guvnor's hope and pride,
Stepped proudly on the platform as the ringer on my side;
Old dad was in his glory there, it gave the old man joy...

The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume,
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red,
The maples like torches aflame overhead.
...

The waves unbuild the wasting shore;
Where mountains towered the billows sweep,
Yet still their borrowed spoils restore,
And build new empires from the deep.
So while the floods of thought lay waste...

(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)



I

Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly...

God with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other's comfort kind:
D'ep, d'eper than divined,...

There floated the sounds of church-chiming,
But no one was nigh,
Till there came, as a break in the loneness,
Her father, she, I.
And we slowly moved on to the wicket,
And downlooking stood,...

The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.
...

She looked like a bird from a cloud
On the clammy lawn,
Moving alone, bare-browed
In the dim of dawn.
The candles alight in the room
For my parting meal
Made all things withoutdoors loom...