Works

When country roads begin to thaw
In mottled spots of damp and dust,
And fences by the margin draw
Along the frosty crust
Their graphic silhouettes, I say,
The Spring is coming round this way.
...

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it, lie down for an aeon or two,...

Whene'er I see those smiling eyes,
So full of hope, and joy, and light,
As if no cloud could ever rise,
To dim a heaven so purely bright--
I sigh to think how soon that brow...

When evening shadows fall,
She hangs her cares away
Like empty garments on the wall
That hides her from the day;
And while old memories throng,
And vanished voices call,...

When first that smile, like sunshine, blest my sight,
Oh what a vision then came o'er me!
Long years of love, of calm and pure delight,
Seemed in that smile to pass before me....

He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour
Just to invent a fancy style
To spread the celebration paint
So it would show at least a mile.

Some things they did I will not tell....

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
...

When I was still a youthful wight,

So full of enjoyment and merry,
The painters used to assert, in spite,

That my features were small yes, very;
Yet then full many a beauteous child...

I will not know when I am dead
If sun or moon is overhead;
I'll stretch out flat without a sound
Inside a box beneath the ground,
And never rise again to see
Branches lifting on a tree,...

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:

The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high
...

Only in August my heart was aflame,
Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night, I should hardly care.
...

When Love was a child, and went idling round,
'Mong flowers the whole summer's day,
One morn in the valley a bower he found,
So sweet, it allured him to stay.
...

When Lydia smiles, I seem to see
The walls around me fade and flee;
And, lo, in haunts of hart and hind
I seem with lovely Rosalind,
In Arden 'neath the greenwood tree:
The day is drowsy with the bee,...

G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy--
Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
Ef you practise twell you 're gray,
You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'
Lak de ones dat rants and rings...

When moonlike ore the hazure seas
In soft effulgence swells,
When silver jews and balmy breaze
Bend down the Lily's bells;
When calm and deap, the rosy sleap
Has lapt your soal in dreems,...

When she, my lady, smiles,
I feel as one who, lost in darksome wilds,
Sees suddenly the sun in middle sky
Shining upon him like a great glad eye.
When my sweet lady smiles.
...

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took, the same as me!

The market-girls an' fishermen,...

When on a summer's morn I wake,
And open my two eyes,
Out to the clear, born-singing rills
My bird-like spirit flies,

To hear the Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush,
Or any bird in song;...

When on the lip the sigh delays,
As if 'twould linger there for ever;
When eyes would give the world to gaze,
Yet still look down and venture never;
When, tho' with fairest nymphs we rove,...

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

When Prometheus stole the flame,
Did he know what with it came?
Did he look afar and see
All the blessings that would be?
Could he view the gentle gloam...