Works

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams -
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!...

(1829-1896)



Spring at her height on a morn at prime,
Sails that laugh from a flying squall,
Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme -
Youth is the sign of them, one and all....

Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
The moss they overspill;
Pools that the breezes crinkle;
The wheel beside the mill,
With its wet, weedy frill;
Wind-shadows in the wheat;...

Where are the passions they essayed,
And where the tears they made to flow?
Where the wild humours they portrayed
For laughing worlds to see and know?
Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe?...

Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs,
For, old or new,
All that is good in them belongs
Only to you;

And, singing as when all was young,
They will recall
Those others, lived but left unsung -...

Above the Crags that fade and gloom
Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat;
Ridged high against the evening bloom,
The Old Town rises, street on street;
With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead,...

Gulls in an aery morrice
Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .
The full sea, sleepily basking,
Dreams under skies of dream.

Gulls in an aery morrice
Circle and swoop and close . . ....

I gave my heart to a woman -
I gave it her, branch and root.
She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,
She cast it under foot.

Under her feet she cast it,
She trampled it where it fell,...

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,...

The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
From camp and church, the fireside and the street,
She beckons forth - and strife and song have been.
...

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud....

Down the quiet eve,
Thro' my window with the sunset
Pipes to me a distant organ
Foolish ditties;

And, as when you change
Pictures in a magic lantern,
Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling...

London, December 10, 1869.
Ladysmith, January 15, 1900.

We cheered you forth - brilliant and kind and brave.
Under your country's triumphing flag you fell.
It floats, true Heart, over no dearer grave -...

(May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901)

Sceptre and orb and crown,
High ensigns of a sovranty containing
The beauty and strength and state of half a World,
Pass from her, and she fades...

(Ob. October 30, 1897)

He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint,
Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,
And old-world whiskers. You found him cynic, saint,...

In the placid summer midnight,
Under the drowsy sky,
I seem to hear in the stillness
The moths go glimmering by.

One by one from the windows
The lights have all been sped....

It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,...

Army Reserve; a worshipper of BOBS,
With whom he stripped the smock from CANDAHAR;
Neat as his mount, that neatest among cobs;
Whenever pageants pass, or meetings are,
He moves conspicuous, vigilant, severe,...

An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust;
An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit;
ST. MARTIN'S STEPS, where every venomous gust
Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit;...

Who says Drum-Major says a man of mould,
Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread,
And pacing still, a triumph to behold,
Of his own spine at least two yards ahead!...