Works

Why be at pains that I should know
You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track...

Why did I sketch an upland green,
And put the figure in
Of one on the spot with me? -
For now that one has ceased to be seen
The picture waxes akin
To a wordless irony.
...

Why does she so long delay?
Night is waning fast away;
Thrice have I my lamp renewed,
Watching here in solitude,
Where can she so long delay?
Where, so long delay?
...

Hush then
why do you cry?
It's you and me
the same as before.

If you hear a rustle
it's only a rabbit
gone back to his hole
in a bustle.

If something stirs in the branches...

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
...

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow? -
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew:...

Why is the nameless sorrowing look
So often thought a whim?
God-willed, the willow shades the brook,
The gray owl sings a hymn;

Sadly the winds change, and the rain
Comes where the sunlight fell:...

Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames...

Why should I pine? when there in Spain
Are eyes to woo, and not in vain;
Dark eyes, and dreamily divine:
And lips, as red as sunlit wine;

Sweet lips, that never know disdain:...

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;...

Why should the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle
Repine as if his hour were come too late?
Not unprotected in her mouldering state,
Antiquity salutes him with a smile,...

Why should we sigh o'er a summer that's dead -
Let us think of the summer to be.
It always better to look ahead,
For the rose will come again just as red
And just as fair to see.
...

"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;...

The Spring is gone. I have not seen
Its fairies tripping on the Block,
Arcadians in grey and green,
The happy flapper in a frock
So dainty that the breezes fret
It like the smoke of cigarette.
...

In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,
Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own,--a stout attempt
To hold communion with the Evening Star...

When my last long-beer has vanished and the truth is left unsaid;
When each sordid care is banished from my chair and from my bed,
And my common people sadly murmur: "'Arry Lawson dead,"
...

O reverend sir, I do declare
It drives me most to frenzy,
To think of you a-lying there
Down sick with influenzy.

A body'd thought it was enough
To mourn your wife's departer,...

From the regions of the north
Where the waters now are frozen,
Towards the south they issue forth
A flock of wild geese of four dozen.

But when they flew o'er the river Thames...

The glad, glad days, and the pleasant ways -
Ho! for the fields and the wildwood!
The scents, the sights, and the dear delights -
Ho! for our care-free childhood!

Heavy the air with a fragrance rare,...

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying....