Works

SEE, chil-dren, the mis-guid-ed Mole.
He lives down in a deep, dark hole;
Sweet-ness, and Light, and good Fresh Air
Are things for which he does not care.
He has not e-ven that make-shift...

Among all lovely things my Love had been;
Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew
About her home; but she had never seen
A glow-worm, never one, and this I knew.
...

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything...

I walked through a Forest, beneath the hot noon,
On Etheline calling and calling!
One said: 'She will hear you and come to you soon,
When the coolness, my brother, is falling.'...

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....

PRELUDE

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers...

She stood among the lilies
In sunset's brightest ray,
Among the tall June lilies,
As stately fair as they;
And I, a boyish lover then,
Looked once, and, lingering, looked again,...

The dew is gleaming in the grass,
The morning hours are seven,
And I am fain to watch you pass,
Ye soft white clouds of heaven.

Ye stray and gather, part and fold;
The wind alone can tame you;...

Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am;...

Already in the dew-wrapped vineyards dry
Dense weights of heat press down. The large bright drops
Shrink in the leaves. From dark acacia tops
The nuthatch flings his short reiterate cry;...

A briefe Prologue to the verses following.

Deare Tom, thy booke was like to come to light,
Ere I could gaine but one halfe howre to write;
They go before whose wits are at their noones,...

She was fair as a Passion-flower,
(But little of love he knew.)
Her lucent eyes were like amber wine,
And her eyelids stained with blue.

He called them the Gates of Fair Desire,...

Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;...

Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,
Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew,
A reaper came, and swung his cradled scythe
Around this stump, and, shearing slowly, drew...

She is a lady fair and wise,
Her heart her counsel keeps,
And well she knows of time that flies
And tide that onward sweeps;
But still she sits with restless eyes
Where Memory sleeps---...

On the early and lamented death of George and Maggie Rosseaux, brother and sister, who died within one week of each other in the autumn of 1875. Young, beautiful and beloved, they were indeed lovely and pleasant in their lives,...

A monument for the Soldiers!
And what will ye build it of?
Can ye build it of marble, or brass, or bronze,
Outlasting the Soldiers' love?
Can ye glorify it with legends
As grand as their blood hath writ...

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight;
My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine;
My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light
Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;...

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light happy moods of alien natures which
Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.
...