Still flowed the music, flowed the wine.The youth in silence went;Through naked streets, in cold moonshine,His homeward way he bent,Where, on the city’s seaward line,His lattice seaward leant. He knew not why he left the throng,But that he could not rest;That something pained him in the song,And mocked him in the jest;And a cold moon-glitter […]

Hark, the rain is on my roof!Every sound drops through the darkOn my soul with dull reproof,Like a half-extinguished spark.I! alas, how am I here,In the midnight and alone?Caught within a net of fear!All my dreams of beauty gone! I will rise: I must go forth.Better face the hideous night,Better dare the unseen north,Than be […]

Proudly the youth, by manhood sudden crowned,Went walking by his horses to the plough,For the first time that morn. No soldier gayFeels at his side the throb of the gold hilt(Knowing the blue blade hides within its sheath,As lightning in the cloud) with more delight,When first he belts it on, than he that dayHeard still […]

Better to smell a violet,Than sip the careless wine;Better to list one music tone,Than watch the jewels’ shine. Better to have the love of one,Than smiles like morning dew;Better to have a living seedThan flowers of every hue. Better to feel a love within,Than be lovely to the sight;Better a homely tendernessThan beauty’s wild delight. […]

My gift would find thee fast asleep,And arise a dream in thee;A violet sky o’er the roll and sweepOf a purple and pallid sea;And a crescent moon from my sky should creepIn the golden dream to thee. Thou shouldst lay thee down, and sadly listTo the wail of our cold birth-time;And build thee a temple, […]

“Thou wanderest in the land of dreams,O man of many songs;To thee the actual only seems–No realm to thee belongs.” “Seest thou those mountains in the east,O man of ready aim?”“‘T is only vapours that thou seest,In mountain form and name.” “Nay, nay, I know them all too well,Each ridge, and peak, and dome;In that […]

I. Upon a rock, high on a mountain side,Thousands of feet above the lake-sea’s lip,A rock in which old waters’ rise and dip,Plunge and recoil, and backward eddying tideHad, age-long, worn, while races lived and died,Involved channels, where the sea-weed’s dripFollowed the ebb; and now earth-grasses sipFresh dews from heaven, whereby on earth they bide–I […]

To God and man be simply true:Do as thou hast been wont to do:Or, Of the old more in the new:Mean all the same when said to you. I love thee. Thou art calm and strong;Firm in the right, mild to the wrong;Thy heart, in every raging throng,A chamber shut for prayer and song. Defeat […]

Methinks I see thee, lying calm and low,Silent and dark within thy earthy bed;Thy mighty hands, in which I trusted, dead,Resting, with thy long arms, from work or blow;And the night-robe, around thy tall form, flowDown from the kingly face, and from the head,Save by its thick dark curls, uncovered–My brother, dear from childhood, lying […]

If I were a monk, and thou wert a nun,Pacing it wearily, wearily,From chapel to cell till day were done,Wearily, wearily,Oh! how would it be with these hearts of ours,That need the sunshine, and smiles, and flowers? To prayer, to prayer, at the matins’ call,Morning foul or fair;Such prayer as from lifeless lips may fall–Words, […]

Thus, once, long since, the daring of my youthDrew nigh thy greatness with a little thing;And thou didst take me in: thy home of truth Has domed me since, a heaven of sheltering,Uplighted by the tenderness and graceWhich round thy absolute friendship ever fling A radiant atmosphere. Turn not thy faceFrom that small part of […]

Were I a skilful painter,My pencil, not my pen,Should try to teach thee hope and fear;And who should blame me then?Fear of the tide-like darknessThat followeth close behind,And hope to make thee journey onIn the journey of the mind. Were I a skilful painter,What should my painting be?A tiny spring-bud peeping forthFrom a withered wintry […]

First-born of the creating Voice!Minister of God’s spirit, who wast sentTo wait upon Him first, what time He wentMoving about ‘mid the tumultuous noiseOf each unpiloted elementUpon the face of the void formless deep!Thou who didst come unbodied and alone,Ere yet the sun was set his rule to keep,Or ever the moon shone,Or e’er the […]

I walked all night: the darkness did not yield.Around me fell a mist, a weary rain,Enduring long; till a faint dawn revealed A temple’s front, cloud-curtained on the plain.Closed were the lofty doors that led within;But by a wicket one might entrance gain. O light, and awe, and silence! Entering in,The blackness and chaotic rain […]

We doubt the word that tells us: Ask,And ye shall have your prayer;We turn our thoughts as to a task,With will constrained and rare. And yet we have; these scanty prayersYield gold without alloy:O God! but he that trusts and daresMust have a boundless joy.

When round the earth the Father’s handsHave gently drawn the dark;Sent off the sun to fresher lands,And curtained in the lark;‘Tis sweet, all tired with glowing day,To fade with faded light;To lie once more, the old weary way,Upfolded in the night. A mother o’er the couch may bend,And rose-leaf kisses heap:In soothing dreams with sleep […]

It was a drizzly morning where I stood.The cloud had sunk, and filled with fold on foldThe chimneyed city; so the smoke rose not,But spread diluted in the cloud, and fellA black precipitate on miry streets,Where dim grey faces vision-like went by,But half-awake, half satisfied with sleep. Slave engines had begun their ceaseless growlOf labour. […]

THE OUTER DREAM. Young, as the day’s first-born Titanic brood,Lifting their foreheads jubilant to heaven,Rose the great mountains on my opening dream.And yet the aged peace of countless yearsReposed on every crag and precipiceOutfacing ruggedly the storms that sweptFar overhead the sheltered furrow-vales;Which smiled abroad in green as the clouds brokeDrifting adown the tide of […]

I would I were a child,That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father!And follow Thee with running feet, or ratherBe led thus through the wild. How I would hold thy hand!My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting,Which casts all beauteous shadows, ever shifting,Over this sea and land. If a dark thing came […]

Brothers, look there! What! see ye nothing yet?Knit your eyebrows close, and stare;Send your souls forth in the gaze,As my finger-point is set,Through the thick of the foggy air.Beyond the air, you see the dark;(For the darkness hedges still our ways;)And beyond the dark, oh, lives away!Dim and far down, surely you markA huge world-heap […]