I When we have thrown off this old suit,So much in need of mending,To sink among the naked mute,Is that, think you, our ending?We follow many, more we lead,And you who sadly turf us,Believe not that all living seedMust flower above the surface. II Sensation is a gracious gift,But were it cramped to station,The prayer […]

Sweet as Eden is the air,And Eden-sweet the ray.No Paradise is lost for themWho foot by branching root and stem,And lightly with the woodland shareThe change of night and day. Here all say,We serve her, even as I:We brood, we strive to sky,We gaze upon decay,We wot of life through death,How each feeds each we […]

I Fleck of sky you are,Dropped through branches dark,O my little one, mine!Promise of the star,Outpour of the lark;Beam and song divine. II See this precious gift,Steeping in new birthAll my being, for signEarth to heaven can lift,Heaven descend on earth,Both in one be mine! III Life in light you glassWhen you peep and coo,You, […]

We spend our lives in learning pilotage,And grow good steersmen when the vessel’s crank!Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shankSidled to gain the sunny bench of Age.It is the sentence which completes that stage;A testament of wisdom reading blank.The seniors of the race, on their last plank,Pass mumbling it as nature’s final page.These, bent […]

Close Echo hears the woodman’s axe,To double on it, as in glee,With clap of hands, and little lacksOf meaning in her repartee.For all shall fall,As one has done,The tree of me,Of thee the tree;And unto allThe fate we waitReveals the wheelsWhereon we run:We tower to flower,We spread the shade,We drop for crop,At length are laid;Are […]

What links are ours with orbs that areSo resolutely far:The solitary asks, and theyGive radiance as from a shield:Still at the death of day,The seen, the unrevealed.Implacable they shineTo us who would of Life obtainAn answer for the life we strainTo nourish with one sign.Nor can imagination throwThe penetrative shaft: we passThe breath of thought, […]

I With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,And made them on each side a shadow seem.Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dreamTo fall on daylight; and night puts awayHer darker veil for grey. II In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by;We came […]

I I stood at the gate of the cotWhere my darling, with side-glance demure,Would spy, on her trim garden-plot,The busy wild things chase and lure.For these with their ways were her feast;They had surety no enemy lurked.Their deftest of tricks to their leastShe gathered in watch as she worked. II When berries were red on […]

On the morning of May,Ere the children had entered my gateWith their wreaths and mechanical lay,A metal ding-dong of the date!I mounted our hill, bearing heartThat had little of life save its weight:The crowned Shadow poising dartHung over her: she, my own,My good companion, mate,Pulse of me: she who had shownFortitude quiet as Earth’sAt the […]

I This Riddle rede or die,Says History since our Flood,To warn her sons of power:-It can be truth, it can be lie;Be parasite to twist awry;The drouthy vampire for your blood;The fountain of the silver flower;A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;Supple of wax or tempered steel;The spur to honour, snake in nest:‘Tis as […]

I A revelation came on Jane,The widow of a labouring swain:And first her body trembled sharp,Then all the woman was a harpWith winds along the strings; she heard,Though there was neither tone nor word. II For past our hearing was the air,Beyond our speaking what it bare,And she within herself had sightOf heaven at work […]

(ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN FRIENDLY TRAMPS.) I The wind is East, the wind is West,Blows in and out of haven;The wind that blows is the wind that’s best,And croak, my jolly raven!If here awhile we jigged and laughed,The like we will do yonder;For he’s the man who masters a craft,And light as a lord can wander.So, […]

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost aliveLeap off the rim of earth across the dome.It is a night to make the heavens our homeMore than the nest whereto apace we strive.Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:The […]

Historic be the survey of our kind,And how their brave Society took shape.Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape,The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find,Who, with some jars in harmony, combined,Their primal instincts taming, to escapeThe brawl indecent, and hot passions drape.Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind.Thus entered they the field of […]

Earth loves her young: a preference manifest:She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,And makes her revel of their merry zest;As in our East much were it in our West,If men had risen to do the work of heads.Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treadsThe ways they walk; by […]

Ask, is Love divine,Voices all are, ay.Question for the sign,There’s a common sigh.Would we, through our years,Love forego,Quit of scars and tears?Ah, but no, no, no!

Love is winged for two,In the worst he weathers,When their hearts are tied;But if they divide,O too true!Cracks a globe, and feathers, feathers,Feathers all the ground bestrew. I was breast of morning sea,Rosy plume on forest dun,I the laugh in rainy fleeces,While with meShe made one.Now must we pick up our pieces,For that then so […]

I One fairest of the ripe unwedded leftHer shadow on the Sage’s path; he found,By common signs, that she had done a theft.He could have made the sovereign heights resoundWith questions of the wherefore of her state:He on far other but an hour beforeIntent. And was it man, or was it mate,That she disdained? or […]

Sword of Common Sense! –Our surest gift: the sacred chainOf man to man: firm earth for trustIn structures vowed to permanence:-Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain!Implacable perforce of just;With that good treasure in defence,Which is our gold crushed out of joy and painSince first men planted foot and hand was king:Bright, nimble of the […]

Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?Even such limp slough as the snake has leftSlack to the gale upon spikes of whin,For cast-off coat of a life gone blank,In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine;And thine to […]