Works

I.

A death-like dew was falling
On the herbs and the grassy ground;
The stars to their bournes prest forward,
Night cloaked the hills around.

He thought of a night long past, -...

Silent, with hands crost meekly on his breast,
Long time, with keen and meditative eye,
Stood the old painter of Siena by
A canvas, whose sign manual him confest.
...

"Only a penny, Sir!"
A child held to my view
A bunch of "glory-roses," red
As blood, and wet with dew.

(O earnest little face,
With living light in eye,
Your roses are too fair for earth,...

A mossy footfall in this wood
A peal of thunder were,
Or autumn tempest-shriek, compared
With the unwhispered stir
Of massy fluids lift in air,
To build these leafy pillars fair.
...

O soul, that art essential change,
Bickering beams, a flutter strange,
Lightning of thought and gust of passion,
A silver thread in this mountain range;

The waters of thy shimmering rill,...

O come, unpack the heart of care!
Kingcups sun the meadows o'er,
The yellowbugle sudden blows
By the river's tidal flows,
And the heavens are bare.

Room, room, and open sky,...

I.

Fair spirit of the plaining sea,
Thou heard'st Apollo's lyre! -
Now folded are thy silver wings
Thee sunward bore,
A dream and a desire.

Ranging the upper azure deeps,...

Earth's manifold noises break
Overhead, in the calm,
In unison full, and wake
The note of a psalm.

On the sunny hills, in the vales,
It falls on my ear;
Down the baffling winds it sails,...

Shy bird of the silver arrows of song,
That cleave our Northern air so clear,
Thy notes prolong, prolong,
I listen, I hear:
"I - love - dear - Canada,
Canada, Canada."
...

The lithe wind races and sings
Over the grasses and wheat -
See the emerald floor as it springs
To the touch of invisible feet!

Ah, later, the fir and the pine
Shall stoop to its weightier tread,...

"Time in advance behind him hides his wings." - YOUNG.


As comes amain the glossy flying raven,
That with unwavering wing, breast on the view,
Cleaves slow the lucid air beneath the blue,...

I would enshrine in silvern song
The charm that bore our souls along,
As in the sun-flushed days of summer
We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

When flecks of foam of flying spray...