“O England, may God punish thee!” – Is it that Teuton genius flowers Only to breathe malignity Upon its friend of earlier hours? – We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours, We have loved your burgs, your pines’ green moan, Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers; Your shining souls of deathless dowers Have […]

ON BEHALF OF THE BELGIAN DESTITUTE Seven millions stand Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:- We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead, And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore, Can poorly soothe these ails unmerited Of souls forlorn upon the facing shore! – Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band Seven millions […]

“Would that I’d not drawn breath here!” some one said, “To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds, Where purposelessly month by month proceeds A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread.” Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead To the gross spectacles of this our day, And never put on the proffered cloak […]

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word Of local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,” “Ich woll,” “Er sholl,” and by-talk similar, Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon gird At England’s very loins, thereunto spurred By […]

I Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. II Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. III Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: […]

(in Memoriam F. W. G.) Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind; But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow, And wondered to what he would […]

AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM “Instigator of the ruin – Whichsoever thou mayst be Of the masterful of Europe That contrived our misery – Hear the wormwood-worded greeting From each city, shore, and lea Of thy victims: “Conqueror, all hail to thee!” “Yea: ‘All hail!’ we grimly shout thee That wast author, fount, and […]

When battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought, In spirit men said, “End we quick or dead, Honour is some reward! Let us fight fair–for our own best or worst; So, Gentlemen of the Guard, Fire first!” In the open they stood, Man to man in his knightlihood: They would not […]

Often when warring for he wist not what, An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak, Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek, And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot; Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot The deed of grace amid the roar and reek; Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak […]

The dead woman lay in her first night’s grave, And twilight fell from the clouds’ concave, And those she had asked to forgive forgave. The woman passing came to a pause By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross, And looked upon where the other was. And as she mused there thus spoke she: […]

Up and be doing, all who have a hand To lift, a back to bend. It must not be In times like these that vaguely linger we To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land Untended as a wild of weeds and sand. – Say, then, “I come!” and go, O women and […]

I Phantasmal fears, And the flap of the flame, And the throb of the clock, And a loosened slate, And the blind night’s drone, Which tiredly the spectral pines intone! II And the blood in my ears Strumming always the same, And the gable-cock With its fitful grate, And myself, alone. III The twelfth hour […]

I looked up from my writing, And gave a start to see, As if rapt in my inditing, The moon’s full gaze on me. Her meditative misty head Was spectral in its air, And I involuntarily said, “What are you doing there?” “Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole And waterway hereabout For the body […]

I met a man when night was nigh, Who said, with shining face and eye Like Moses’ after Sinai:- “I have seen the Moulder of Monarchies, Realms, peoples, plains and hills, Sitting upon the sunlit seas! – And, as He sat, soliloquies Fell from Him like an antiphonic breeze That pricks the waves to thrills. […]

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, “He was a man who used to notice such things”? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes […]

How it came to an end! The meeting afar from the crowd, And the love-looks and laughters unpenned, The parting when much was avowed, How it came to an end! It came to an end; Yes, the outgazing over the stream, With the sun on each serpentine bend, Or, later, the luring moon-gleam; It came […]

Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared, And when the Absolute In backward Time outgave the deedful word Whereby all life is stirred: “Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,” No mortal knew or heard. But in due days the purposed Life outshone – Serene, sagacious, free; –Her […]

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) “The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . . It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home, And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow More fit to rest than roam. “But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain; There’s not a little steel beneath the rust; […]

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in, And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands, Vaster battalions press for further strands, To argue in the self-same bloody mode Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, Still fails […]

(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899) I Last year I called this world of gain-givings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs The tragedy of things. II Yet at that censured time no heart was […]