He saw the portrait of his enemy, offered At auction in a street he journeyed nigh, That enemy, now late dead, who in his life-time Had injured deeply him the passer-by. “To get that picture, pleased be God, I’ll try, And utterly destroy it; and no more Shall be inflicted on man’s mortal eye A […]

She saw herself a lady With fifty frocks in wear, And rolling wheels, and rooms the best, And faithful maidens’ care, And open lawns and shady For weathers warm or drear. She found herself a striver, All liberal gifts debarred, With days of gloom, and movements stressed, And early visions marred, And got no man […]

The rain imprinted the step’s wet shine With target-circles that quivered and crossed As I was leaving this porch of mine; When from within there swelled and paused A song’s sweet note; And back I turned, and thought, “Here I’ll abide.” The step shines wet beneath the rain, Which prints its circles as heretofore; I […]

Said the red-cloaked crone In a whispered moan: “The dead man was limp When laid in his chest; Yea, limp; and why But to signify That the grave will crimp Ere next year’s sun Yet another one Of those in that house – It may be the best – For its endless drowse!” Said the […]

No; no; It must not be so: They are the ways we do not go. Still chew The kine, and moo In the meadows we used to wander through; Still purl The rivulets and curl Towards the weirs with a musical swirl; Haymakers As in former years Rake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears; […]

I went by the Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments fall thereon From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imagining To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders Threw there […]

A woman was playing, A man looking on; And the mould of her face, And her neck, and her hair, Which the rays fell upon Of the two candles there, Sent him mentally straying In some fancy-place Where pain had no trace. A cowled Apparition Came pushing between; And her notes seemed to sigh, And […]

“A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.” And the Spirit said, “I can make the clock of the years go backward, But am loth to stop it where you will.” And I cried, “Agreed To that. Proceed: It’s better than dead!” He answered, “Peace”; And called her up–as last […]

(M. H.) We waited for the sun To break its cloudy prison (For day was not yet done, And night still unbegun) Leaning by the dial. After many a trial – We all silent there – It burst as new-arisen, Throwing a shade to where Time travelled at that minute. Little saw we in it, […]

I have done all I could For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her, Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her, Home from the heath or the wood. At the mirth-time of May, When my shadow first lured her, I’d donned my new bravery Of greenth: ’twas my all. […]

Now I am dead you sing to me The songs we used to know, But while I lived you had no wish Or care for doing so. Now I am dead you come to me In the moonlight, comfortless; Ah, what would I have given alive To win such tenderness! When you are dead, and […]

But don’t you know it, my dear, Don’t you know it, That this day of the year (What rainbow-rays embow it!) We met, strangers confessed, But parted–blest? Though at this query, my dear, There in your frame Unmoved you still appear, You must be thinking the same, But keep that look demure Just to allure. […]

“These Gothic windows, how they wear me out With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square, Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout, And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there! “What a vocation! Here do I draw now The abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm; Martha I paint, and dream of Hera’s brow, Mary, and think […]

“It is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew, “Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth Secludes from view. “They ride their diurnal round Each day-span’s sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache like ours. “If the living could but hear What is heard by […]

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate; I saw the sun decline and set, And still was fain to wait. A trotting boy passed up the way And roused me from my thought; I called to him, and showed where lay A spot I shyly sought. “A summer-house fair stands […]

He often would ask us That, when he died, After playing so many To their last rest, If out of us any Should here abide, And it would not task us, We would with our lutes Play over him By his grave-brim The psalm he liked best – The one whose sense suits “Mount Ephraim” […]

For Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man’s while; Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought, Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style. In earliest years–why I know not – I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that leaked slowly out, May haply have […]

[He travels southward, and looks around;] I journeyed from my native spot Across the south sea shine, And found that people in hall and cot Laboured and suffered each his lot Even as I did mine. [and cannot discern the boundary] Thus noting them in meads and marts It did not seem to me That […]

What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us; What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away? Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye, Who watch us […]

I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels Of my own country, that the musical rhymes Rung by them into space at meted times Amid the market’s daily stir and stress, And the night’s empty star-lit silentness, Might solace […]