(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands That Neptune strokes in lake and sea, With what high joy from stranger lands Doth thy old friend set foot on thee! Yea, barely seems it true to me That no Bithynia holds me now, But calmly and assuringly Around me stretchest homely Thou. […]

“Thou shalt be–Nothing.”–OMAR KHAYYAM. “Tombless, with no remembrance.”–W. SHAKESPEARE. Dead shalt thou lie; and nought Be told of thee or thought, For thou hast plucked not of the Muses’ tree: And even in Hades’ halls Amidst thy fellow-thralls No friendly shade thy shade shall company!

I scanned her picture dreaming, Till each dear line and hue Was imaged, to my seeming, As if it lived anew. Her lips began to borrow Their former wondrous smile; Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow, Grew sparkling as erstwhile. Such tears as often ran not Ran then, my love, for thee; And O, believe […]

Knight, a true sister-love This heart retains; Ask me no other love, That way lie pains! Calm must I view thee come, Calm see thee go; Tale-telling tears of thine I must not know!

Here’s one in whom Nature feared–faint at such vying – Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.

Child, were I king, I’d yield my royal rule, My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due, My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool, My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool, For a glance from you! Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs, Angels, the demons abject under me, Vast chaos with its teeming […]

I I have lived with shades so long, And talked to them so oft, Since forth from cot and croft I went mankind among, That sometimes they In their dim style Will pause awhile To hear my say; II And take me by the hand, And lead me through their rooms In the To-be, where […]

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee, O Willer masked and dumb! Who makest Life become, – As though by labouring all-unknowingly, Like one whom reveries numb. How much of consciousness informs Thy will Thy biddings, as if blind, Of death-inducing kind, Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill But moments in Thy […]

“O memory, where is now my youth, Who used to say that life was truth?” “I saw him in a crumbled cot Beneath a tottering tree; That he as phantom lingers there Is only known to me.” “O Memory, where is now my joy, Who lived with me in sweet employ?” “I saw him in […]

(IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.) I In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile, Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. – On burgher, squire, and clown It smiled the long street down for near a mile II But evil days beset that domicile; The stately beauties of its […]

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it – We who believe the evidence? Here and there the watch-towers knell it With a sullen significance, Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense. Hearts that are happiest hold not by it; Better we let, then, the old view reign; Since […]

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) While the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine – All smalling slowly to the gray sea line – And each significant red smoke-shaft pales, Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails, Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men To seeming words that […]

When up aloft I fly and fly, I see in pools The shining sky, And a happy bird Am I, am I! When I descend Towards their brink I stand, and look, And stoop, and drink, And bathe my wings, And chink and prink. When winter frost Makes earth as steel I search and search […]

She sped through the door And, following in haste, And stirred to the core, I entered hot-faced; But I could not find her, No sign was behind her. “Where is she?” I said: – “Who?” they asked that sat there; “Not a soul’s come in sight.” – “A maid with red hair.” – “Ah.” They […]

Forty Augusts–aye, and several more–ago, When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza’d like a multitude below In the sway of an all-including joy Without cloy. Blankly I walked there a double decade after, When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in […]

That mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see Of you and me? That mirror Whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror And throws our mind back on us, and our heart, Until we start? That mirror Works well in these […]

(Circa 1850) On afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of “Cambridge New.” We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees. So mindless were those outpourings! […]

(Bournemouth, 1875) We sat at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin’s day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and me On Swithin’s day. We were irked by the […]

(Wooer’s Song) Why be at pains that I should know You sought not me? Do breezes, then, make features glow So rosily? Come, the lit port is at our back, And the tumbling sea; Elsewhere the lampless uphill track To uncertainty! O should not we two waifs join hands? I am alone, You would enrich […]

I met you first–ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer. Much riper in years I met you–in a temple Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes, And you spread over me like […]