Works

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,...

I. The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are...

Her fair companions she outshone,
As this or that transcendent star
Makes all its sister orbs look wan
And dim and lustreless and far.

Her charm impressed the fleeting glance,...

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot, snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on;...

A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags,
A rude and natural causeway, interposed
Between the water and a winding slope
Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore
Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy:...

I clomb full high the belfry tower
Up to yon arrow-slit, up and away,
I said 'let me look on my heart's fair flower
In the wall'd garden where she doth play.'

My care she knoweth not, no nor the cause,...

George Fuller

Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair
Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!...

A i(little Indian temple) in i(the Golden Age.) Around it i(a garden;)
i(around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneelinq)
i(within the temple.)...

. . . They caught them at the bend. He and his son
Sat in the car, revolvers in their laps.
From either side the stone-walled wintry road
There flashed thin fire-streaks in the rainy dusk....

To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses...

How the returning days, one after one,
Come ever in their rhythmic round, unchanged,
Yet from each loop'd robe for every man
Some new thing falls. Happy is he
Who fronts them without fear, and like the gods...

From our Dominion never
Take Thy protecting hand,
United, Lord, for ever
Keep Thou our fathers' land!
From where Atlantic terrors
Our hardy seamen train,
To where the salt sea mirrors...

Dark over the face of Nature sublime!
Reign'd tyranny, warfare, and every crime;
The world a desert'no oasis green
A man-loving soul on its surface had seen;
Then mercy above a mandate sent forth...

I.

When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
THREE HUNDRED MEN AND THREE MEN.[1]
And then I prayed I yet might see...

The Babe was laid in the Manger
Between the gentle kine,
All safe from cold and danger,
"But it was not so with mine,
(With mine! With mine!)
"Is it well with the child, is it well?"...

What woman hugs her infant there?
Another star has shot an ear.

What made the drapery glisten so?
Not a man but Delacroix.

What made the ceiling waterproof?
Landor's tarpaulin on the roof...

By chance my fingers, resting on my face,
Stayed suddenly where in its orbit shone
The lamp of all things beautiful; then on,
Following more heedfully, did softly trace...

(WITH MANY APOLOGIES TO THE LAUREATE.)

And Willie, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne,
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man;...

There was once a little comet who lived near the Milky Way!
She loved to wander out at night and jump about and play.
The mother of the comet was a very good old star -...

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter - winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;...