I was the midmost of my world When first I frisked me free, For though within its circuit gleamed But a small company, And I was immature, they seemed To bend their looks on me. ...
I worked no wile to meet you, My sight was set elsewhere, I sheered about to shun you, And lent your life no care. I was unprimed to greet you At such a date and place, Constraint alone had won you...
Show me again the time When in the Junetide's prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly! - Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on. ...
I wayfared at the nadir of the sun Where populations meet, though seen of none; And millions seemed to sigh around As though their haunts were nigh around,...
When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,...
"O I won't lead a homely life As father's Jack and mother's Jill, But I will be a fiddler's wife, With music mine at will! Just a little tune, Another one soon,...
My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free...
These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. ...
The kettle descants in a cozy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then at her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place;...
"Sixpence a week," says the girl to her lover, "Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover The cost of her headstone when she died. And that was a year ago last June;...
"And now to God the Father," he ends, And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, And emotion pervades the crowded aisles....
"Would it had been the man of our wish!" Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she In the wedding-dress the wife to be - "Then why were you so mollyish As not to insist on him for me!"...
"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,...
They sit and smoke on the esplanade, The man and his friend, and regard the bay Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed, Smile sallowly in the decline of day....
He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, A type of decayed gentility; And by some small signs he well can guess That she comes to him almost breakfastless. ...
"You see those mothers squabbling there?" Remarks the man of the cemetery. One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!' Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!' Another, 'How dare you move my flowers...
"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane To the house just left, whence a vixen voice Comes out with the firelight through the pane, And he sees within that the girl of his choice...
"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!" ...
"I'll tell being past all praying for - Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me;...