Works

There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves
Espalier, in a fading summer air,
And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower,
Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain...

From his cradle in the glamourie
They have stolen my wee brother,
Roused a changeling in his swaddlings
For to fret mine own poor mother.
Pules it in the candle light
Wi' a cheek so lean and white,...

There haunts in Time's bare house an active ghost,
Enamoured of his name, Polonius.
He moves small fingers much, and all his speech
Is like a sampler of precisest words,
Set in the pattern of a simpleton....

Thick in its glass
The physic stands,
Poor Henry lifts
Distracted hands;
His round cheek wans
In the candlelight,
To smell that smell!
To see that sight!

Finger and thumb...

Lone and alone she lies,
Poor Miss 7,
Five steep flights from the earth,
And one from heaven;
Dark hair and dark brown eyes, -
Not to be sad she tries,
Still - still it's lonely lies...

When Queen Djenira slumbers through
The sultry noon's repose,
From out her dreams, as soft she lies,
A faint thin music flows.

Her lovely hands lie narrow and pale
With gilded nails, her head...

Rachel sings sweet -
Oh yes, at night,
Her pale face bent
In the candle-light,
Her slim hands touch
The answering keys,
And she sings of hope
And of memories:
Sings to the little...

The sky was like a waterdrop
In shadow of a thorn,
Clear, tranquil, beautiful,
Dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran;
A rumour of the sea
Rose in profundity and sank...

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inward melody
She paces to.

Each narrow hoof is lifted high
Beneath the dark enclust'ring pines,...

Sadly, O, sadly, the sweet bells of Baddeley
Played in their steeples when Robin was gone,
Killed by an arrow,
Shot by Cock Sparrow,
Out of a Maybush, fragrant and wan.
...

When Sam goes back in memory,
It is to where the sea
Breaks on the shingle, emerald-green,
In white foam, endlessly;
He says - with small brown eye on mine -
"I used to keep awake,...

"I'm thinking and thinking," said old Sam Shore,
"'Twere somebody knocking I heard at the door."

From the clock popped the cuckoo and cuckooed out eight,
As there in his chair he wondering sate ......

TO R.I.


My heart faints in me for the distant sea.
The roar of London is the roar of ire
The lion utters in his old desire
For Libya out of dim captivity....

Black lacqueys at the wide-flung door
Stand mute as men of wood.
Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor,
A burnished solitude.
A hundred waxen tapers shine
From silver sconces; softly pine...

With changeful sound life beats upon the ear;
Yet striving for release
The most delighting string's
Sweet jargonings,
The happiest throat's
Most easeful, lovely notes...

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon:
This way, and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch...

Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.

Without a thought, or fear, they shut...

The scent of bramble fills the air,
Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
The blue of morn shut in her eyes.

How many a changing moon hath lit...

As I lay awake in the white moonlight
I heard a faint singing in the wood,
"Out of bed,
Sleepyhead,
Put your white foot, now;
Here are we
Beneath the tree
Singing round the root now."
...

No breath of wind,
No gleam of sun -
Still the white snow
Swirls softly down -
Twig and bough
And blade and thorn
All in an icy
Quiet, forlorn.
Whispering, nestling,
Through the air,...