Works

I did not say, "Yes, we had better part
Since love is over or must be suppressed."
I did not say, "I'll hold you in my heart
Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,...

So fair, that all the morning aches
With such monotony!
So brief, that sadness breaks
The brittle spell.

Nothing so fair, nothing so brief:
The sun leaps up and falls....

Fair Eve, as fair and still
As fairest thought, climbs the high sheltering hill;
As still and fair
As the white cloud asleep in the deep air.

As cool, as fair and cool,...

Surely I must have ailed
On that dark night,
Or my childish courage failed
Because there was no light;
Or terror must have come
With his chill wing,
And made my angel dumb,...

I


"No, no! Leave me not in this dark hour,"
She cried. And I,
"Thou foolish dear, but call not dark this hour;
What night doth lour?"
And nought did she reply,
But in her eye...

O linger late, poor yellow whispering leaves!
As yet the eves
Are golden and the simple moon looks through
The clouds and you.
O linger yet although the night be blind,
And in the wind...

Now the trees rest: the moon has taught them sleep,
Like drowsy wings of bats are all their leaves,
Clinging together. Girls at ease who fold
Fair hands upon white necks and through dusk fields...

Is it because Spring now is come
That my heart leaps in its bed of dust?
Is it with sorrow or strange pleasure
To watch the green time's gathering treasure?

Or is there some too sharp distaste...

Happy are they whom men and women love,
And you were happy as a river that flows
Down between lonely hills, and knows
The pang and virtue of that loneliness,
And moves unresting on until it move...

Because the earth is vast and dark
And wet and cold;
Because man's heart wants warmth and light
Lest it grow old;

Therefore the house was built--wall, roof
And brick and beam,...

You were a gipsy as you bent
Your dark hair over the black grate.
Hardly the west light above the hill
Showed your shadow, crooked and still.
The bellows hissed, and one bright spark...

The fire burns low
Where it has burned ages ago,
Sinks and sighs
As it has done to a hundred eyes
Staring, staring
At the last cold smokeless glow.

Here men sat...

It stands there
Tall and solitary on the edge
Of the last hill, green on the green hill.
Ten o'clock the tree's called, no one knows why.
Perhaps it was planted there at ten o'clock...

Love me not less
Yet ease me of this fever,
That in my wondering heart
Burns, sinks, burns again ever.

Is it your love
In me so fiercely burning,
Or my love leaping to you...

From that warm height and pure,
The peak undreamed of out of heavy air
Rising to heaven more strange and rare;
From that amazed brief sojourn, exquisite, insecure;

Fallen from thence to this,...

Near the house flowed, or paused, the black Canal,
Edged by the timber piles so black and tall.
From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull
Along the footpath, slow and beautiful,...

That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,...

It was a night of smell and dew
When very old things seemed how new;
When speech was softest in the still
Air that loitered down the hill;
When the lime's sweetness could but creep...

In the hush of early even
The clouds came flocking over,
Till the last wind fell from heaven
And no bird cried.

Darkly the clouds were flocking,
Shadows moved and deepened,...

Now speaks the wave, whispering me of you;
In all his murmur your music murmurs too.
O 'tis your voice, my love, whispering in
The wave's voice, even your voice so far and thin;...