Works

I like to think this friendship that we hold
As youth's high gift in our two hands to-day
Still shall we find as bright, untarnished gold
What time the fleeting years have left us grey....

My love it should be silent, being deep--
And being very peaceful should be still--
Still as the utmost depths of ocean keep--
Serenely silent as some mighty hill.
...

I

They whisper at my very gate,
These clacking gossips every one,
"We saw them in the wood of late,
Her and the widow's son;
The horses at the forge may wait,
The wool may go unspun."
...

I am as weary as a child
That weeps upon its mother's breast
For joy of comforting. But I
Have no such place to rest.

I am as weary as a bird
Blown by wild winds far out to sea...

God send thee peace, Oh, great unhappy heart--
A world away, I pray that thou mayst rest
Softly as on the Well-Belov'd's breast,
Where ever in her wistful dreams thou art.
...

Sometimes, slow moving through unlovely days,
The need to look on beauty falls on me
As on the blind the anguished wish to see,
As on the dumb the urge to rage or praise;...

"Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?"
"That I have, my Master,
Three bags full."

One is for the mother who prays for me at night--
A gift of broken promises to count by candle-light....

A hundred miles between us
Could never part us more
Than that one step you took from me
What time my need was sore.

A hundred years between us
Might hold us less apart...

Good-bye, Pierrette. The new moon waits
Like some shy maiden at the gates
Of rose and pearl, to watch us stand
This little moment, hand in hand--
Nor one red rose its watch abates.
...

Oh, Heart of a Hundred Sorrows,
Whose pity is great therefore,
The gift that thy children bring thee
Is ever a sorrow more.

Sure of thy dear compassion,
Concerned for our own relief,...

The houseful that we were then, you could count us by the dozens,
The wonder was that sometimes the old walls wouldn't burst:
Herself (the Lord be good to her!), the aunts and rafts of cousins,...

Never did I find me mate for charmin' an' delightin',
Never one that had me bate for courtin' an' for fightin';--
(A white moon at the crossroads then, and Denny with the fiddle;...

I

My life has been like a bee that roves
Through a scented garden close,
And 'tis I who have kept the honey of love,
The hoarded sweetness and scent thereof,
For all I forget the rose.
...

My father took me by the hand
And led me home again;
(He brought me in from sorrow
As you'd bring a child from rain).
The child's place at the hearth-stone,
The child's place at the board,...

Monseigneur plays his new gavotte--
Within her gilded chair the Queen
Listens, her rustling maids between;
A very tulip-garden stirred
To hear the fluting of a bird;...

Mothers of men--the words are good indeed in the saying,
Pride in the very sound of them, strength in the sense of them, then
Why is it their faces haunt me, wistful faces as praying...

I saw the old sea captain in his city daughter's house,
Shaved till his chin was pink, and brushed till his hair was flat,
In a broadcloth suit and varnished boots and a collar up to his ears....

Orchards in the Spring-time! Oh, I think and think of them,--
Filmy mists of pink and white above the fresh, young green,
Lifting and drifting,--how my eyes could drink of them,...

The kindliest thing God ever made,
His hand of very healing laid
Upon a fevered world, is shade.

His glorious company of trees
Throw out their mantles, and on these...

Katie had the grand eyes and Delia had a way with her,
And Mary had the Saints' face and Maggie's waist was neat,
But Sheila had the merry heart that travelled all the day with her,...