Works

"There was darkness."

A Morn of guilt, an hour of doom -
Shocks and tremblings dread;
All the city sunk in gloom -
Thick darkness overhead.
An awful Sufferer straight and stark;...

(F.M.L.)


Living child or pictured cherub,
Ne'er o'ermatched its baby grace;
And the mother, moving nearer,
Looked it calmly in the face;
Then with slight and quiet gesture,...

Can I make white enough my thought for thee,
Or wash my words in light? Thou hast no mate
To sit aloft in the silence silently
And twin those matchless heights undesecrate....

"I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

Dear is the lost wife to a lone man's heart,
When in a dream he meets her at his door,
And, waked for joy, doth know she dwells apart,...

The marten flew to the finch's nest,
Feathers, and moss, and a wisp of hay:
"The arrow it sped to thy brown mate's breast;
Low in the broom is thy mate to-day."

"Liest thou low, love? low in the broom?...

Lying imbedded in the green champaign
That gives no shadow to thy silvery face,
Open to all the heavens, and all their train,
The marshalled clouds that cross with stately pace,...

["Concerning this man (Robert Delacour), little further is known than that he served in the king's army, and was wounded in the battle of Marston Moor, being then about twenty-seven years of age. After the battle of Nazeby, fin...

Come away, the clouds are high,
Put the flashing needles by.
Many days are not to spare,
Or to waste, my fairest fair!
All is ready. Come to-day,
For the nightingale her lay,...

"While it was yet dark."

Mary of Magdala, when the moon had set,
Forth to the garden that was with night dews wet,
Fared in the dark - woe-wan and bent was she,...

Midsummer night, not dark, not light,
Dusk all the scented air,
I'll e'en go forth to one I love,
And learn how he doth fare.
O the ring, the ring, my dear, for me,
The ring was a world too fine,...

Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups,
Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!
When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses,
And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small!...

To bear, to nurse, to rear,
To watch, and then to lose:
To see my bright ones disappear,
Drawn up like morning dews -
To bear, to nurse, to rear,
To watch, and then to lose:...

Ay, I saw her, we have met, -
Married eyes how sweet they be, -
Are you happier, Margaret,
Than you might have been with me?
Silence! make no more ado!
Did she think I should forget?...

I.

I woke in the night, and the darkness was heavy and deep:
I had known it was dark in my sleep,
And I rose and looked out,
And the fathomless vault was all sparkling, set thick round about...

THE COMING IN OF THE "MERMAIDEN."

The moon is bleached as white as wool,
And just dropping under;
Every star is gone but three,
And they hang far asunder, -
There's a sea-ghost all in gray,...

I passed an inland-cliff precipitate;
From tiny caves peeped many a soot-black poll;
In each a mother-martin sat elate,
And of the news delivered her small soul.
...

I walked beside a dark gray sea.
And said, "O world, how cold thou art!
Thou poor white world, I pity thee,
For joy and warmth from thee depart.

"Yon rising wave licks off the snow,...

Mother.
Well, Frances.

Frances.
Well, good mother, how are you?

M. I'm hearty, lass, but warm; the weather's warm:
I think 'tis mostly warm on market days....

Only you'd have me speak.
Whether to speak
Or whether to be silent is all one;
Whether to sleep and in my dreaming front
Her small scared face forlorn; whether to wake...

Once on a time there walked a mariner,
That had been shipwrecked; - on a lonely shore,
And the green water made a restless stir,
And a great flock of mews sped on before....