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,...
Often when warring for he wist not what, An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak, Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek, And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot; ...
"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,...
"What's the good of going to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell'ham Hill, Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way As we used to do? She will no more climb up there, Or be visible anywhere...
I know not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers' mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually. ...
When your soft welcomings were said, This curl was waving on your head, And when we walked where breakers dinned It sported in the sun and wind, And when I had won your words of grace...
Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life's conditions, Nor from heeding Time's monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam...
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling Before I could see her shape, Rustling through the heather That wove the common's drape, On that evening of dark weather When I hearkened, lips agape. ...
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...
Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone, Outside a house, on the pavement-stone, I sang to her, as we'd sung together On former eves ere I felt her tether. - Above the door of green by me...
When I am in hell or some such place, A-groaning over my sorry case, What will those seven women say to me Who, when I coaxed them, answered "Aye" to me?
She told how they used to form for the country dances - "The Triumph," "The New-rigged Ship" - To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses,...
When a night in November Blew forth its bleared airs An infant descended His birth-chamber stairs For the very first time, At the still, midnight chime; All unapprehended...
Reticulations creep upon the slack stream's face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base;...
I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels Of my own country, that the musical rhymes ...
The rain imprinted the step's wet shine With target-circles that quivered and crossed As I was leaving this porch of mine; When from within there swelled and paused A song's sweet note;...