Works

In the beautiful May weather,
Lapsing soon into June;
On a golden, golden day
Of the green and golden May,
When our hearts were beating tune
To the coming feet of June,...

The rowan tree grows by the tower foot,
(Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
Can the dead feel joy or pain?)
And the owls in the ivy blink and hoot,
And the sea-waves bubble around its root,...

Oh lapping waves!--oh gnawing waves!--
That rest not day nor night,--
I hear ye when the light
Is dim and awful in your hollow caves.--

All day the winds were out, and rode...

Here the sunshine, filtering down,
Through leaves of emerald, dun and brown,
Is green instead of golden
And the hum and roar of the distant town
In an endless hush is holden.
...

I lift my spirit to your cloudy thrones,
And feel it broaden to your vast expanse,
Oh! mountains, so immeasurably old,
Crowned with bald rocks and everlasting cold,...

Into the west the day goes down,
Smiling and fading into the night,
Is it a cross, or is it a crown
I have worn through all these hours of light!

Bending over my milk-white curds,...

The wind croons under the icicled eaves--
Croons and mutters a wordless song,
And the old elm chafes its skeleton leaves
Against the windows all night long.

Under the spectral garden wall,...

"Oh! spare dual idols of the past,
Whose lips are dumb, whose eyes are dim;
Truth's diadem is not for him
Who comes, the fierce Iconoclast:
Who wakes the battle's stormy blast,...

Along the floors of heaven the music rolls,
Fills the vast dome, and lifts our fainting souls:
Praise God! Oh praise Him all created things,
Praise Him, the Lord of lords, the King of kings
...

The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
One after one into the lap of time.
...

Under the orchard boughs,
That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,...

O not with arms reversed,
And the slow beating of the muffled drum,
And funeral marches, bring our hero home
These stormy woods where his young heart was nursed
Ring with a trumpet burst...

Out of the west a voice--a shudder of horror and pity;
Quivers along the pulses of all the winds that blow;--
Woe for the fallen queen, for the proud and beautiful city....

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy atones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy...

I.


Break dull November skies, and make
Sunshine over wood and lake,
And fill your cells of frosty air
With thousand, thousand welcomes to the Princely pair!...

Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
Grey Autumn meets her fate.

Forsaken and alone...

Inscribed to OUR FATHER AND MOTHER, and read on that Anniversary,
FEBRUARY 15TH, 1876.


A half a century of time,
The mingled pain and bliss
That make the history of life...

Love and Obedience--these the Higher Law
From which Thy worlds have swerved not, singing still
Their primal hymn rejoicing, as at first
The morning stars together. Hast thou heard,...

In those dark mornings, deep in June,
When brooding birds stir in the nest,
And heavy dews slip down the leaves,
And drop into the rose's breast,
I woke and looked into the east,...

I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
Arched at the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden,
And sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled;...