“I am here to time, you see; The glade is well-screened–eh?–against alarm; Fit place to vindicate by my arm The honour of my spotless wife, Who scorns your libel upon her life In boasting intimacy! “‘All hush-offerings you’ll spurn, My husband. Two must come; one only go,’ She said. ‘That he’ll be you I know; […]

Does he want you down there In the Nether Glooms where The hours may be a dragging load upon him, As he hears the axle grind Round and round Of the great world, in the blind Still profound Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound Of your string, revealing you had not forgone […]

How could I be aware, The opposite window eyeing As I lay listless there, That through its blinds was dying One I had rated rare Before I had set me sighing For another more fair? Had the house-front been glass, My vision unobscuring, Could aught have come to pass More happiness-insuring To her, loved as […]

(Lover’s Ditty) I think of the slope where the rabbits fed, Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair, Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red – And the something else seen there. Between the blooms where the sod basked bright, By the bobbing fuchsia trees, Was another and yet more eyesome sight – The sight that […]

This statue of Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning, Strangely wistful, And half tristful, Have turned her from foul to fair; With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush, Bringing her out of the grime That has smeared her during the smokes […]

(Echo of an old song) Sitting on the bridge Past the barracks, town and ridge, At once the spirit seized us To sing a song that pleased us – As “The Fifth” were much in rumour; It was “Whilst I’m in the humour, Take me, Paddy, will you now?” And a lancer soon drew nigh, […]

Out of the past there rises a week – Who shall read the years O! – Out of the past there rises a week Enringed with a purple zone. Out of the past there rises a week When thoughts were strung too thick to speak, And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone. […]

When he lit the candles there, And the light fell on his hand, And it trembled as he scanned Her and me, his vanquished air Hinted that his dream was done, And I saw he had begun To understand. When Love’s viol was unstrung, Sore I wished the hand that shook Had been mine that […]

Show me again the time When in the Junetide’s prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly! – Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on. Show me again the day When from the sandy bay We looked together upon the pestered sea! – Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, […]

I travel as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough As Nature makes of me. And thus I visit bodiless Strange gloomy households often at odds, And wonder if Man’s consciousness Was a mistake of God’s. And next I meet you, and I pause, […]

A WOMAN’S DREAM At midnight, in the room where he lay dead Whom in his life I had never clearly read, I thought if I could peer into that citadel His heart, I should at last know full and well What hereto had been known to him alone, Despite our long sit-out of years foreflown, […]

I I bent in the deep of night Over a pedigree the chronicler gave As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light Of the moon in its old age: And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed Like a drifting […]

Rambling I looked for an old abode Where, years back, one had lived I knew; Its site a dwelling duly showed, But it was new. I went where, not so long ago, The sod had riven two breasts asunder; Daisies throve gaily there, as though No grave were under. I walked along a terrace where […]

When the cloud shut down on the morning shine, And darkened the sun, I said, “So ended that joy of mine Years back begun.” But day continued its lustrous roll In upper air; And did my late irradiate soul Live on somewhere?

Dishevelled leaves creep down Upon that bank to-day, Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown; The wet bents bob and sway; The once warm slippery turf is sodden Where we laughingly sat or lay. The summerhouse is gone, Leaving a weedy space; The bushes that veiled it once have grown Gaunt trees that interlace, […]

It was but a little thing, Yet I knew it meant to me Ease from what had given a sting To the very birdsinging Latterly. But I would not welcome it; And for all I then declined O the regrettings infinite When the night-processions flit Through the mind!

I climbed to the crest, And, fog-festooned, The sun lay west Like a crimson wound: Like that wound of mine Of which none knew, For I’d given no sign That it pierced me through.

Something tapped on the pane of my room When there was never a trace Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom My weary Beloved’s face. “O I am tired of waiting,” she said, “Night, morn, noon, afternoon; So cold it is in my lonely bed, And I thought you would join me […]

(Fickle Lover’s Song) I said and sang her excellence: They called it laud undue. (Have your way, my heart, O!) Yet what was homage far above The plain deserts of my olden Love Proved verity of my new. “She moves a sylph in picture-land, Where nothing frosts the air:” (Have your way, my heart, O!) […]

“I will get a new string for my fiddle, And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle Until the old pewter-wares hum: And we’ll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!” From the night came the oddest of answers: A hollow wind, like a bassoon, And headstones all ranged up […]