Works

Fair faces crowd on Christmas night
Like seven suns a-row,
But all beyond is the wolfish wind
And the crafty feet of the snow.

But through the rout one figure goes
With quick and quiet tread;...

They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward,
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored,
I rose politely in the club...

Augurs that watched archaic birds
Such plum'd prodigies might read,
The eagles that were double-faced,
The eagle that was black indeed;
And when the battle-birds went down...

Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,
Me ye shall not shift or shame
With your beauty: here among you
Man hath set his spear of flame.

Lamp to lamp we send the signal,...

I love to see the little stars
All dancing to one tune;
I think quite highly of the Sun,
And kindly of the Moon.



The million forests of the Earth
Come trooping in to tea....

You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go--
I know your hoary question, the riddle that all men know.
You have weighed the stars in a balance, and grasped the skies in a span:...

(With apologies to a beautiful poem.)


Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe decrease
By cautious birth-control and die in peace)
Mellow with learning lightly took the word...

'What of vile dust?' the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.

'You, that play tyrant to the dust,...

Do you remember one immortal
Lost moment out of time and space,
What time we thought, who passed the portal
Of that divine disastrous place
Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered...