Works

Of all the trees in England,
Her sweet three corners in,
Only the Ash, the bonnie Ash
Burns fierce while it is green.

Of all the trees in England,
From sea to sea again,...

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)



I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
...

"Trees," so he said and laid him lovingly
At a great beech-tree's root, "are my best friends.
Upon their love it seems my life depends.
No dog or woman for me! Give me a tree!...

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell,
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,...

There beyond my window ledge,
Heaped against the sky, a hedge
Of huge and waving tree-tops stands
With multitudes of fluttering hands.

Wave they, beat they, to and fro,...

Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend....

There stood a low and ivied roof,
As gazing rustics tell,
In times of chivalry and song
'Yclept the holy well.

Above the ivies' branchlets gray
In glistening clusters shone;...

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men...

I would imagine
the eyelids fail,
fall closed, shut,
as icicles sit
on porch doors
where old nails rust.

When Love and I drew softly nigh
And gazed in modest Chloe's eye
We saw reflected there in part
The lovely mansion of her heart,
A sight so fair that, quite bereft
Of sense and shame, we had but left...

I would watch him lifting
another drink from the fridge,
joke about the connection
with a triangular trade -
bedroom to kitchen fridge,
then to the bathroom -
only to repeat the cycle...

Oh, Villa Maria, thrice favored spot,
Unclouded sunshine is still thy lot
Since first, 'neath thy mortal old,
The spouses of Christ - working out God's will,
Meekly entered, their mission high to fill...

Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;...

("Laissez-moi pleurer sur cette race.")

[I. v.]


Oh! let me weep that race whose day is past,
By exile given, by exile claimed once more,
Thrice swept away upon that fatal blast....

Trickle, drops! my blue veins
O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,
Candid, from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,
From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd,...

POPPIES, you try to tell me, glowing there in the wheat;
Poppies! Ah no! You mock me: It's blood, I tell you, it's blood.
It's gleaming wet in the grasses; it's glist'ning warm in the wheat;...

What shall I bring you, sweet?
A posy prankt with every April hue:
The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,
Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?

Or shall I bring you, sweet,...

Only a spar from a broken ship
Washed in by a careless wave;
But it brought back the smile of a vanished lip,
And his past peered out of the grave.

Only a leaf that an idle breeze...

THE EPIC HEXAMETER.

Giddily onward it bears thee with resistless impetuous billows;
Naught but the ocean and air seest thou before or behind.


THE DISTICH.
...

I. TO WERTHER.


Once more, then, much-wept shadow, thou dost dare

Boldly to face the day's clear light,
To meet me on fresh blooming meadows fair,

And dost not tremble at my sight....