Works

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in,
But one chill bed for all to rest in,...

'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
'Has anyone else had word of him?'
Not this tide....

There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour's space,
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
Sun and moon and stars were hid,
God had left His Throne,
When Helen came to me, she did,...

"What's that that hirples at my side?"
The foe that you must fight, my lord.
"That rides as fast as I can ride?"
The shadow of your might, my lord.

"Then wheel my horse against the foe!"...

Master, this is Thy Servant. He is rising eight weeks old.
He is mainly Head and Tummy. His legs are uncontrolled.
But Thou hast forgiven his ugliness, and settled him on Thy knee......

Cry "Murder" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbour anxious eyes
Asking: "Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
Some centuries ago across the world....

The stream is shrunk, the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
Each jostling each along the bank;
And, by one drouthy fear made still,...

So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comfy as comfy could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
Because I was only three.
And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot...

I am the Most Wise Baviaan, saying in Most wise tones,
"Let us melt into the landscape,just us two by our lones."
Peoplehavecome,inacarriage,calling. But Mummy is there.......

This Uninhabited Island
Is near Cape Gardafui;
But it's hot, too hot, of Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go in a P. & O.
To call on the Cake Parsee.

When the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside
When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)
And steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And trunks begin to slide;...

As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled,
Once, twice and again!
And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,...

The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions,
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,...

The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,...

Oh, long had we paltered
With bridle and girth
Ere those horses were haltered
That gave us the Earth,

Ere the Flame and the Fountain,
The Spark and the Wheel,
Sank Ocean and Mountain...

Dread Mother of Forgetfulness
Who, when Thy reign begins,
Wipest away the Soul's distress,
And memory of her sins.

The trusty Worm that dieth not
The steadfast Fire also,...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;...

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;...

They burnt a corpse upon the sand,
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging dhows
That beat from Zanzibar.
Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise,
Thou art the Light of Guidance to our eyes!

My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach,
And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well,
From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel's chattering speech,...