Works

The curtain rose, the play began,
The limelight on the gay garbs shone;
Yet carelessly I gazed upon
The painted players, maid and man,
As one with idle eyes who sees
The marble figures on a frieze....

Very often, when I'm drinking,
Of the old days I am thinking,
Of the good old days when living was a Joy,
And each morning brought new Pleasure,
And each night brought Dreams of Treasure,...

If I were young as you, Sixteen,
And you were old as I,
I would not be as I have been,
You would not be so shy,
We should not watch with careless mien
The golden days go by,...

Lo, upon the carpet, where
Throned upon a heap of slain
Blue-eyed dolls of beauty rare
(Ah, they pleaded all in vain!)
Sits the Infant Tamerlane!

Broken toys upon the floor...

The narrow, thorny path he trod.
'Enter into My joy,' said God.
The sad ascetic shook his head;
'I've lost all taste for joy,' he said.

There is a saying of renown,
"God made the country, man the town."
Well, everybody to his trade!
But man likes best the thing he made.
The town has little space to spare;...

The wan light of a stormy dawn
Gleamed on a tossing ship:
It was the In Memoriam
Upon a mourning trip.

Wild waves were on the windward bow,
And breakers on the lee;...

The days go by, the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,...

All silent is the room,
There is no stir of breath,
Save mine, as in the gloom
I sit alone with Death.

Short life it had, the sweet,
Small babe here lying dead,
With tapers at its feet...

Within his office, smiling.
Sat JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN,
But all the screws of Birmingham
Were working in his brain.

The heart within his bosom
Was as a millstone hard;
His eye was cold and cruel,...

It fell upon a summer night
The village folk were soundly sleeping,
Unconscious of the glamour white
In which the moon all things was steeping;
One window only showed a light;...

The waters make a music low:
The river reeds
Are trembling to the tunes of long ago,
Dead days and deeds

Become alive again, as on
I float, and float,...

Methought I came unto a world-wide plain
Where souls stood thick as grain at harvest-tide,
And many reapers, full of pious pride,
With rapid scythe-sweeps mowed them down amain;...

Last night, as one who hears a tragic jest,
I woke from dreams, half-laughing, half in tears;
Methought that I had journeyed in the spheres
And stood upon the Planet of the Blest!...

By the road, near her father's dwelling,
There groweth a hawthorn tree:
Its blossoms are fair and fragrant
As the love that I cast from me.

It is all a-bloom this morning
In the sunny silentness,...

Who are these strange small folk,
These that come to our homes as kings,
Asking nor leave nor grace,
Bending our necks to their yoke,
Taking the highest place,
And mastery of all things?
...

Not only on cross and gibbet,
By sword, and fire, and flood,
Have perished the world's sad martyrs
Whose names are writ in blood.

A woman lay in a hovel,
Mean, dismal, gasping for breath;...

When the moon a golden-pale
Lustre on my casement flings,
An enchanted nightingale
In the haunted silence sings.

Strange the song, its wondrous words
Taken from the primal tongue,...

The red sun on the lonely lands
Gazed, under clouds of rose,
As one who under knitted hands
Takes one last look and goes.

Then Pain, with her white sister Fear,
Crept nearer to my bed:...

The world was in my debt,
I was the Friend of Man,
When, years ago, I met
The Old Bohemian.

His hat was shocking bad,
He wore a faded tie,
And yet, withal, he had...