So, friend, your shop was all your house! Its front, astonishing the street, Invited view from man and mouse To what diversity of treat Behind its glass–the single sheet! What gimcracks, genuine Japanese: Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog; Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese; Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog: Queer names, too, such a catalogue! I thought, […]

Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself? Do I live in a house you would like to see? Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? “Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key”? Invite the world, as my betters have done? “Take notice: this building remains on view, Its suites of reception every one, Its […]

Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass Life in a long midsummer day, My feet confined to a plot of grass, My eyes from a wall not once away! And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green: Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth, […]

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire– Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face– Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart– When the first summons from the darkling earth […]

I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring’s delightful things; Aye, and, for me, the fourth part, too. A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends. […]

So, I shall see her in three days And just one night, but nights are short, Then two long hours, and that is morn. See how I come, unchanged, unworn! Feel, where my life broke off from thine, How fresh the splinters keep and fine– Only a touch and we combine! Too long, this time […]

I wonder do you feel today As I have felt since, hand in hand, We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, This morn of Rome and May? For me, I touched a thought, I know, [A] Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw […]

The morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say; As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled 5 In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning […]

MEETING AT NIGHT The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three […]

Here’s the garden she walked across, Arm in my arm, such a short while since; Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss Hinders the hinges and makes them wince! She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance […]

Thus the Mayne glideth Where my Love abideth. Sleep’s no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate’er befall, Meandering and musical, Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a […]

Over the sea our galleys went With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave– A gallant armament; Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat and […]

Heap cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair; such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain. And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian’s fine […]

Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den, In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men, Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut, Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these,–but,– Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees Softens away: […]