Works

Ye Bards in all your thousand dens,
Great souls with fewer pence than pens,
Sublime adorers of Apollo,
With folios full, and purses hollow;
Whose very souls with rapture glisten,...

The sextant of the meetinouse, which sweeps
And dusts, or is supposed too! and makes fiers,
And lites the gas and sometimes leaves a screw loose,
in which case it smells orful - worse than lampile;...

"Saint Praxed's ever was the Church for peace"


If down here I chance to die,
Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
To the Hills for old sake's sake,
Pack me very thoroughly...

Let others prate of Greece and Rome,
And towns where they may never be,
The muse should wander nearer home.
My country is enough for me;
Her wooded hills that watch the sea,...

(Spirit of Lord Eldon speaks)

This England is gone staring mad,
She hath abolished Chancery,[J]
See the long lines of suitors, sad
To find themselves unwontedly
After one day of trial free....

I sit before the firelight's glow
With all the world in apogee,
And con good Master Florio
With pipe a-light; and as I see
Queen Bess herself with book a-knee,
Reading it o'er and o'er again,...

They walked the valley of the dead;
Lit by a weird half light;
No sound they made, no word they said;
And they were pale with fright.
Then suddenly from unseen places came...

No girdle hath weaver or goldsmith wrought
So rich as the arms of my love can be;
No gems with a lovelier lustre fraught
Than her eyes, when they answer me liquidly.
Dear lady of love, be kind to me...

TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.


Song wakes with every wakening year
From hearts of birds that only feel
Brief spring's deciduous flower-time near:
And song more strong to help or heal...

Like a queen enchanted who may not laugh or weep,
Glad at heart and guarded from change and care like ours,
Girt about with beauty by days and nights that creep...

There are sleeping dreams and waking dreams;
What seems is not always as it seems.

I looked out of my window in the sweet new morning,
And there I saw three barges of manifold adorning...

The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
And sorrowful old age that comes by night
As a thief comes that has no heart by day,...

Clothes and the Man I sing. Reformers, note
These of the Subaltern who owned a Coat.

He was what veterans miscall, for short,
By that objectionable term, a wart:[1]
...

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;...

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,...

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told...

France tells the story, make our hearts know well,
Christ His Figure stands against the gates of hell:
Flame and shot may rive the fortress walls apart,
Christ the Crucified will heal the breaking heart.
...

Ye who heed a nation's call
And speed to arms therefor,
Ye who fear your children's march
To perils of the war,--
Soldiers of the deck and camp
And mothers of our men,
Hearken to a tale of France...

One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and strait
You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
And loosed an idle hour to kill...

It fell in the year of Mutiny,
At darkest of the night,
John Nicholson by Jal'ndhar came,
On his way to Delhi fight.

And as he by Jal'ndhar came,
He thought what he must do,...