Works

The leaves fall softly: a wind of sighs
Whispers the world's infirmities,
Whispers the tale of the waning years,
While slow mists gather in shrouding tears
On All Souls' Day; and the bells are slow...

Hateful it seems now, yet was I not happy?
Starved of the things I loved, I did not know
I loved them, and was happy lacking them.
If bitterness comes now (and that is hell)...

All that's bright must fade,--
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest.
Stars that shine and fall;--
The flower that drops in springing;--...

All the wide world is but the thought of you:
Who made you out of wonder and of dew?
Was it some god with tears in his deep eyes,
Who loved a woman white and over-wise,...

All the flowers cannot weave
A garland worthy of your hair,
Not a bird in the four winds
Can sing of you that is so fair.

Only the spheres can sing of you;
Some planet in celestial space,...

Matthew met Richard, when or where
From story is not mighty clear:
Of many knotty points they spoke,
And pro and con by turns they took:
Rats half the manuscript have ate;...

But shall we take the Muse abroad,
To drop her idly on the road,
And leave our subject in the middle,
As Butler did his Bear and Fiddle?
Yet he, consummate master, knew
When to recede and where pursue:...

Richard, who now was half asleep,
Roused, nor would longer silence keep;
And sense like this, in vocal breath,
Broke from his twofold hedge of teeth.
Now if this phrase too harsh be thought,...

On grass, on gravel, in the sun,
Or now beneath the shade,
They went, in pleasant Kensington,
A prentice and a maid.

That Sunday morning's April glow,
How should it not impart...

Alone in crowds to wander on,
And feel that all the charm is gone
Which voices dear and eyes beloved
Shed round us once, where'er we roved--
This, this the doom must be...

I am all alone in the house to-night;
They would not have gone away
Had they known of the terrible, bloodless fight
I have held with my heart to-day.
With the old sweet love and the old fierce pain...

I know a seraph who has golden eyes,
And hair of gold, and body like the snow.
Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair
Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow...

i.

Dearest and best of maidens, whom the Fates
have dower'd with beauty, whom the glory-gates
Have shown so splendid in my waking sight,
Is't well, thou syren! thus to haunt the night...

i.

O Love! O Lustre of the sunlit earth
That knows thy step and revels in the worth
Of thy much beauty! Is't thy will anew,
Famed as thou art, to marvel that I sue...

Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,...

Saddle and ride, I heard a man say,
Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea,
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
All those tragic characters ride
But turn from Rosses' crawling tide,...

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.
...

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
...

I sat in heaven like the sun
Above a storm when winter was:
I took the snowflakes one by one
And turned their fragile shapes to glass:
I washed the rivers blue with rain...

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
...