How will it be when one of us alone Goes on that strange last journey of the soul? That certain search for an uncertain goal, That voyage on which no comradeship is known?...
Two swains or clowns - but call them swains - Whilst keeping flocks on Salisbury plains, For all that tend on sheep as drovers Are turned to songsters or to lovers, Each of the lass he call'd his dear,...
How calm, how beauteous and how cool-- How like a sister to the skies, Appears the broad, transparent pool That in this quiet forest lies. The sunshine ripples on its face,...
I stand this way on cloudy winter days From dawn to dusk and I soap heads, Shave them and powder them and speak Indifferent words, stupid, foolish. Most heads are completely shut,...
Ah, ye gods! ye great immortals In the spacious heavens above us! Would ye on this earth but give us Steadfast minds and dauntless courage We, oh kindly ones, would leave you...
It is full winter now: the trees are bare, Save where the cattle huddle from the cold Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true...
What though the Accused, upon his own appeal To righteous Gods when man has ceased to feel, Or at a doubting Judge's stern command, Before the Stone of Power no longer stand...
"Ever exulting in thyself, on fire To flaunt the purple of the Universe, To strut and strut, and thy great part rehearse; Ever the slave of every proud desire; Come now a little down where sports thy sire;...
Since thou readest in her what thou thyself hast there written, And, to gladden the eye, placest her wonders in groups; Since o'er her boundless expanses thy cords to extend thou art able,...
If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare,...
What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly: 'I have kept uninfring'd my nature's law; The inly-written chart thou gayest me...
We sow the glebe, we reap the corn, We build the house where we may rest, And then, at moments, suddenly, We look up to the great wide sky, Inquiring wherefore we were born' For earnest or for jest?...
As I gang roon' the kintra-side Amang the young an' auld, I marvel at the things I see An' a' the lees I'm tauld. There's Mistress-weel, I winna say: I wadna hurt her pride,-...
Ere yet the warning chimes of midnight sound, Set back the flaming index of the year, Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere! ...