Works

Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;...

Clear eyes do dim at last,
And cheeks outlive their rose.
Time, heedless of the past,
No loving-kindness knows;
Chill unto mortal lip
Still Lethe flows.

Griefs, too, but brief while stay,...

The cat she walks on padded claws,
The wolf on the hills lays stealthy paws,
Feathered birds in the rain-sweet sky
At their ease in the air, flit low, flit high.
...

"Who called?" I said, and the words
Through the whispering glades,
Hither, thither, baffled the birds -
"Who called? Who called?"

The leafy boughs on high
Hissed in the sun;...

No lovelier hills than thine have laid
My tired thoughts to rest:
No peace of lovelier valleys made
Like peace within my breast.

Thine are the woods whereto my soul,
Out of the noontide beam,...

Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.

The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;...

There clung three roses to a stem,
Did all their hues of summer don,
But came a wind and troubled them,
And all were gone.

I heard three bells in unison
Clap out some transient heart's delight,...

No one was with me there -
Happy I was - alone;
Yet from the sunshine suddenly
A joy was gone.

A bird in an empty house
Sad echoes makes to ring,
Flitting from room to room...

When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl...

I laid my inventory at the hand
Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate;
And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love singing in that quiet land.
He read the record even to the end -...

Had the gods loved me I had lain
Where darnel is, and thorn,
And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain
Trembles in boughs forlorn.

Nay, but they loved me not; and I
Must needs a stranger be,...

O strange devices that alone divide
The se'r from the seen -
The very highway of earth's pomp and pride
That lies between
The traveller and the cheating, sweet delight
Of where he longs to be,...

In Hans' old Mill his three black cats
Watch the bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:...

I met at eve the Prince of Sleep,
His was a still and lovely face,
He wandered through a valley steep
Lovely in a lonely place.

His garb was grey of lavender,
About his brows a poppy-wreath...

Mrs. Earth makes silver black,
Mrs. Earth makes iron red
But Mrs. Earth can not stain gold,
Nor ruby red.
Mrs. earth the slenderest bone
Whitens in her bosom cold,...

A Song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green - green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wildwood tree.

Widdershins turned I, singing it low,...

The sandy cat by the Farmer's chair
Mews at his knee for dainty fare;
Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse
In the dewy fields the cattle lie...

See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies -
"Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent, of heaven's ways,...

From height of noon, remote and still,
The sun shines on the empty hill.
No mist, no wind, above, below;
No living thing strays to and fro.
No bird replies to bird on high,...

I met a sailor in the woods,
A silver ring wore he,
His hair hung black, his eyes shone blue,
And thus he said to me: -

'What country, say, of this round earth,
What shore of what salt sea,...