Works

The Text is that of the Jamieson-Brown MS.

...

All on a golden summer day,
As through the leaves a single ray
Of yellow sunshine finds its way
So bright, so bright;
The wakened birds that blithely sing
Seem welcoming another spring;...

All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love's eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street -...

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...

Almighty GOD! when round thy shrine
The Palm-tree's heavenly branch we twine,[1]
(Emblem of Life's eternal ray,
And Love that "fadeth not away,")
We bless the flowers, expanded all,[2]...

i.

Oh, smile on me, thou syren of my soul!
That I may curb my thoughts to some control
And not offend thee, as in truth I do,
Morning, and noon and night, when I pursue...

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...

Our lives are Swiss, --
So still, so cool,
Till, some odd afternoon,
The Alps neglect their curtains,
And we look farther on.

Italy stands the other side,
While, like a guard between,...

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,...

Do you think, dear, as you say
Such a light good-bye to-day,
That this parting time may be
Mayhaps less to you, than me?

What a wonder of surprise
Looks out from your sunny eyes....

If Pegasus will let thee only ride him, Spurning my clumsy efforts to o'erstride him, Some fresh expedient the Muse will try, And walk on stilts, although she cannot fly.

TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE
...

BANK.

Is all then forgotten? those amorous pranks
You and I in our youth, my dear Government, played;
When you called me the fondest, the truest of Banks,
And enjoyed the endearing advances I made!...

Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
In a forgotten place near the fence
Where the thickets from Siever's woods
Have crept over, growing sparsely.
And you, you are a leader in New York,...

Stately stand the sunflowers, glowing down the garden-side,
Ranged in royal rank arow along the warm grey wall,
Whence their deep disks burn at rich midnoon afire with pride,...

Not "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye",
But an old man with a smooth skin
And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,
And for years a soul that was stiff and bent,...

I want to see a grandmother like those there used to be,
In a cosy little farm-house, where I could go to tea;
A grandmother with spectacles and a funny, frilly cap,...

Among the green bushes the songs of the thrushes
Are answering each other in music and glee,
While the magpies and rooks, in woods, hedges, near brooks,
Mount their Spring dwellings on every high tree....

"There was darkness."

A Morn of guilt, an hour of doom -
Shocks and tremblings dread;
All the city sunk in gloom -
Thick darkness overhead.
An awful Sufferer straight and stark;...

I.

The years have passed in ceaseless round
Since first they laid her here to rest
In dreamless sleep beneath the silent mound,
With folded hands upon her gentle breast.


II.
...

I.

To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:...