"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, It will pass as your husband's with the rest, While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn Will be gleaming at us from east to west;...
"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; "And why?" asks the man she had that day wed, With a start, as the band plays on outside....
They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been Seems listening aloof, as to things past date....
I was sitting, She was knitting, And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around; When there struck on us a sigh; "Ah - what is that?" said I: "Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound." ...
When you shall see me in the toils of Time, My lauded beauties carried off from me, My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free; ...
Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away, Some other's feature, accent, thought like mine, Will carry you back to what I used to say, And bring some memory of your love's decline. ...
I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will! And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye That he did not discern and domicile One his by right ever since that last Good-bye! ...
This love puts all humanity from me; I can but maledict her, pray her dead, For giving love and getting love of thee - Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed! ...
I am laughing by the brook with her, Splashed in its tumbling stir; And then it is a blankness looms As if I walked not there, Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms, And treading a lonely stair. ...
It pleased her to step in front and sit Where the cragged slope was green, While I stood back that I might pencil it With her amid the scene; Till it gloomed and rained;...
That from this bright believing band An outcast I should be, That faiths by which my comrades stand Seem fantasies to me, And mirage-mists their Shining Land,...
I say, "She was as good as fair," When standing by her mound; "Such passing sweetness," I declare, "No longer treads the ground." I say, "What living Love can catch Her bloom and bonhomie,...
And are ye one of Hermitage - Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road, And do ye know, in Hermitage A thatch-roofed house where sengreens grow? And does John Waywood live there still -...
Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she, Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun, Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually, As his widowed one. ...
I longed to love a full-boughed beech And be as high as he: I stretched an arm within his reach, And signalled unity. But with his drip he forced a breach, And tried to poison me. ...
I have risen again, And awhile survey By my chilly ray Through your window-pane Your upturned face, As you think, "Ah-she Now dreams of me In her distant place!"
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war," ...