DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes? Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom? Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise? Who mass’d, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom? Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone; The swinging waters, and the cluster’d pier. Not idly Earth […]

What mortal, when he saw, Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly: “I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law; The inly-written chart thou gavest me, To guide me, I have steer’d by to the end”? Ah! let us make no claim, On life’s incognisable sea, To too exact a […]

If, in the silent mind of One all-pure, At first imagined lay The sacred world; and by procession sure From those still deeps, in form and colour drest, Seasons alternating, and night and day, The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west, Took then its all-seen way; O waking on a world which thus-wise […]

Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love lends life a little grace, A few sad smiles; and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave. Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die Like spring flowers; Our vaunted life […]

Moderate tasks and moderate leisure, Quiet living, strict-kept measure Both in suffering and in pleasure– ‘Tis for this thy nature yearns. But so many books thou readest, But so many schemes thou breedest, But so many wishes feedest, That thy poor head almost turns. And (the world’s so madly jangled, Human things so fast entangled) […]

Horatian Echo[4] (TO AN AMBITIOUS FRIEND) Omit, omit, my simple friend, Still to enquire how parties tend, Or what we fix with foreign powers. If France and we are really friends, And what the Russian Czar intends, Is no concern of ours. Us not the daily quickening race Of the invading populace Shall draw to […]

TO CRITIAS “Why, when the world’s great mind Hath finally inclined, Why,” you say, Critias, “be debating still? Why, with these mournful rhymes Learn’d in more languid climes, Blame our activity Who, with such passionate will, Are what we mean to be?” Critias, long since, I know (For Fate decreed it so), Long since the […]

TO FAUSTA To die be given us, or attain! Fierce work it were, to do again. So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, pray’d At burning noon; so warriors said, Scarf’d with the cross, who watch’d the miles Of dust which wreathed their struggling files Down Lydian mountains; so, when snows Round Alpine summits, eddying, rose, The […]

Mist clogs the sunshine. Smoky dwarf houses Hem me round everywhere; A vague dejection Weighs down my soul. Yet, while I languish, Everywhere countless Prospects unroll themselves, And countless beings Pass countless moods. Far hence, in Asia, On the smooth convent-roofs, On the gilt terraces, Of holy Lassa, Bright shines the sun. Grey time-worn marbles […]

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM[6] AN EPISODE And the first grey of morning fill’d the east, And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush’d, and still the men were plunged in sleep; Sohrab alone, he slept not; all night long He had lain wakeful, tossing on […]

Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know. But when the moon. their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, […]

Hussein O most just Vizier, send away The cloth-merchants, and let them be, Them and their dues, this day! the King Is ill at ease, and calls for thee. The Vizier O merchants, tarry yet a day Here in Bokhara! but at noon, To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay Each fortieth web of cloth to […]

AN EPISODE And the first grey of morning fill’d the east, And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush’d, and still the men were plunged in sleep; Sohrab alone, he slept not; all night long He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed; But […]

[1] I. SENDING So on the floor lay Balder dead; and round Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, […]

[1] I Tristram Tristram Is she not come? The messenger was sure. Prop me upon the pillows once again– Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure. –Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane! What lights will those out to the northward be? The Page The lanterns of the fishing-boats at sea. […]

Saint Brandan sails the northern main; The brotherhoods of saints are glad. He greets them once, he sails again; So late!–such storms!–The Saint is mad! He heard, across the howling seas, Chime convent-bells on wintry nights; He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides, Twinkle the monastery-lights. But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer’d– And now no bells, […]

In summer, on the headlands, The Baltic Sea along, Sits Neckan with his harp of gold, And sings his plaintive song. Green rolls beneath the headlands, Green rolls the Baltic Sea; And there, below the Neckan’s feet, His wife and children be. He sings not of the ocean, Its shells and roses pale; Of earth, […]

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away! This way, this way! Call her once […]

That son of Italy who tried to blow,[1] Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song, In his light youth amid a festal throng Sate with his bride to see a public show. Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow Youth like a star; and what to youth belong– Gay raiment, sparkling […]

What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?– ‘Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry Stormily sweet, his Titan-agony; It was the sight of that Lord Arundel Who struck, in heat, his child he loved so well, And his child’s reason flicker’d, and did die. Painted (he will’d it) in the gallery They […]