On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiendAbove the rolling ball in cloud part screened,Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.And now upon his western wing he leaned,Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,Now the black planet shadowed Arctic […]

I see a fair young couple in a wood,And as they go, one bends to take a flower,That so may be embalmed their happy hour,And in another day, a kindred mood,Haply together, or in solitude,Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,Wherewith by their young blood they are enduedTo […]

I Now farewell to you! you areOne of my dearest, whom I trust:Now follow you the Western star,And cast the old world off as dust. II From many friends adieu! adieu!The quick heart of the word therein.Much that we hope for hangs with you:We lose you, but we lose to win. III The beggar-king, November, […]

Let Fate or Insufficiency provideMean ends for men who what they are would be:Penned in their narrow day no change they seeSave one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride.Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide:And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree,Must rot if they abjure rapacity,Not argument but effort shall […]

I There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,And her Good morning, Martin! Ay, lass, how d’ye do?Very well, thank you, Martin!–I can’t understand!I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!I can’t understand it. She talks like a song;Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;She […]

Rich labour is the struggle to be wise,While we make sure the struggle cannot cease.Else better were it in some bower of peaceSlothful to swing, contending with the flies.You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece,Is shorn, and rubs with […]

Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor begHonours from aught about thee. Light the young.Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,Which runs, Time’s […]

Two flower-enfolding crystal vases sheI love fills daily, mindful but of one:And close behind pale morn she, like the sunPriming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,Clear water in the cup, and into meThe image of herself: and that being done,Choice of what blooms round her fair garden runIn climbers or in creepers or […]

Assured of worthiness we do not dreadCompetitors; we rather give them hailAnd greeting in the lists where we may fail:Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!My betters are my masters: purely fedBy their sustainment I likewise shall scaleSome rocky steps between the mount and vale;Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed.So […]

Not solitarily in fields we findEarth’s secret open, though one page is there;Her plainest, such as children spell, and shareWith bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,In turbid cities, can the key be bare.It hangs for those who hither thither fare,Close interthreading nature with our kind.They, hearing […]

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!You to reviewers are as ball to bat.They shadow you with Homer, knock you flatWith Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublimeOn you the excommunicates of Rhyme,Because you sing not in the living Fat.The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnatIs verse that shuns their self-producing time.Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,Or […]

Her son, albeit the Muse’s liveryAnd measured courtly paces rouse his taunts,Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,To Nature only will he bend the knee;Spouting the founts of her distilleryLike rough rock-sources; and his woes and wantsBeing Nature’s, civil limitation dauntsHis utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, […]

An inspiration caught from dubious huesFilled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased;For they lead farther than the single-faced,Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse,His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.Men railed at such […]

That Garden of sedate PhilosophyOnce flourished, fenced from passion and mishap,A shining spot upon a shaggy map;Where mind and body, in fair junction free,Luted their joyful concord; like the treeFrom root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lapOf gentlemen the happy nursery.That Garden would on light supremest verge,Were the long […]

As Puritans they prominently wax,And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacksWhen Peace another door in them unlocks,Where conscience shows the eyeing of an oxGrown dully apprehensive of an Axe.Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,Fearing […]

I Strike not thy dog with a stick!I did it yesterday:Not to undo though I gainedThe Paradise: heavy it rainedOn Kobold’s flanks, and he lay. II Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,From his hunt had come back to my heel.I heard a sharp worrying sound,And Bruno foamed on the ground,With Koby as making a meal. III […]

Judge mildly the tasked world; and disinclineTo brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.You have perchance observed the inebriate’s trackAt night when he has quitted the inn-sign:He plays diversions on the homeward line,Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,Nor turns this burdened world, […]

I An English heart, my commandant,A soldier’s eye you have, awakeTo right and left; with looks askantOn bulwarks not of adamant,Where white our Channel waters break. II Where Grisnez winks at DungenessAcross the ruffled strip of salt,You look, and like the prospect less.On men and guns would you lay stress,To bid the Island’s foemen halt. […]

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,Or straining for the angel of the light,Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,When I behold one lamp that through our fenGoes hourly where most noisome; hear againA tongue that loathsomeness will not affrightFrom speaking to the soul of us forthrightWhat things our craven senses keep from […]

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.When nations gain the pitch where rhetoricSeems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food.Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick.O now the down-slope of the lunaticIllumine lest we redden of that brood.For […]