Works

In the winter, flowers are springing;
In the winter, woods are green,
Where our banished birds are singing,
Where our summer sun is seen!
Our cold midnights are coeval
With an evening and a morn...

Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the black mould thick the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lowly toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.
...

The waterfall, deep in the wood,
Talked drowsily with solitude,
A soft, insistent sound of foam,
That filled with sleep the forest's dome,
Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood...

Wild Redbreast! hadst thou at Jemima's lip
Pecked, as at mine, thus boldly, Love might say,
A half-blown rose had tempted thee to sip
Its glistening dews; but hallowed is the clay...

Once in the Workshop, ages ago,
The clay was wet and the fire was low.

And He who was bent on fashioning man
Moulded a shape from a clod,
And put the loyal heart therein;...

"Would that I'd not drawn breath here!" some one said,
"To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds,
Where purposelessly month by month proceeds
A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread."
...

The parents of the learned child
(His father and his mother)
Were utterly aghast to note
The facts he would at random quote
On creatures curious, rare, and wild;
And wondering, ask each other:...

Head in hand, I look at the paper leaf;
It is still white.

I look at the ink
Dry on the end of my brush.

My soul sleeps.
Will it ever wake?
...

In those good days when we were young and wise,
You spake to music, you with the thoughtful eyes,
And God looked down from heaven, pleased to hear
A young man's song arise so firm and clear....

How can the man whose uneventful days,
Each like the other, are obscurely spent
Amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze
Upon a lofty goal serenely bent?
Or he who sedulously tells and groups...

Into the west the day goes down,
Smiling and fading into the night,
Is it a cross, or is it a crown
I have worn through all these hours of light!

Bending over my milk-white curds,...

"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner."

DEAN STANLEY.

Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your Poets. Kings and queens...

A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin
cloth
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight?...

I.

When black frosts pluck the acorns down,
And in the lane the waters freeze;
And 'thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies,
And death sits grimly 'mid the trees;...

Play to the tender stops, though cheerily:
Gently, my soul, my song: let no one hear:
Sing to thyself alone; thine ecstasy
Rising in silence to the inward ear
That is attuned to silence: do not tell...

Some find work where some find rest,
And so the weary world goes on:
I sometimes wonder which is best;
The answer comes when life is gone.

Some eyes sleep when some eyes wake,...

The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine,
It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies,
And purple, like the blood of elderberries.
Surely it is a strong wine - juice distilled of the fierce iron....

(She, alone)



I rose and went to Rou'tor Town
With gaiety and good heart,
And ardour for the start,
That morning ere the moon was down
That lit me off to Rou'tor Town...

I saw three witches
That bowed down like barley,
And straddled their brooms 'neath a louring sky,
And, mounting a storm-cloud,
Aloft on its margin,
Stood black in the silver as up they did fly.
...

I shall know why, when time is over,
And I have ceased to wonder why;
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky.

He will tell me what Peter promised,...