The railway bore him throughAn earthen cutting out from a city:There was no scope for view,Though the frail light shed by a slim young moonFell like a friendly tune. Fell like a liquid ditty,And the blank lack of any charmOf landscape did no harm.The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,And moon-lit, was enoughFor poetry of place: […]

I travelled to where in her lifetimeShe’d knelt at morning prayer,To call her up as if there;But she paid no heed to my suing,As though her old haunt could win notA thought from her spirit, or care. I went where my friend had lectionedThe prophets in high declaim,That my soul’s ear the sameFull tones should […]

I (OLD STYLE) Our songs went up and out the chimney,And roused the home-gone husbandmen;Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,Our hands-across and back again,Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casementsOn to the white highway,Where nighted farers paused and muttered,“Keep it up well, do they!” The contrabasso’s measured boomingSped at each bar to the parish bounds,To shepherds at […]

I have come to the church and chancel,Where all’s the same!– Brighter and larger in my dreamsTruly it shaped than now, meseems,Is its substantial frame.But, anyhow, I made my vow,Whether for praise or blame,Here in this church and chancelWhere all’s the same. Where touched the check-floored chancelMy knees and his?The step looks shyly at the […]

(SONG: Verses 1, 3, key major; verse 2, key minor) Could I but will,Will to my bent,I’d have afar ones near me still,And music of rare ravishment,In strains that move the toes and heels!And when the sweethearts sat for restThe unbetrothed should foot with zestEcstatic reels. Could I be head,Head-god, “Come, now,Dear girl,” I’d say, […]

(A.D. 185-) I’ve been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never again,By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane,And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the choreIn the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more . . . How […]

An hour before the dawn, My friend, You lit your waiting bedside-lamp, Your breakfast-fire anon, And outing into the dark and damp You saddled, and set on. Thuswise, before the day,My friend,You sought her on her surfy shore,To fetch her thence awayUnto your own new-builded doorFor a staunch lifelong stay. You said: “It seems to […]

If you had knownWhen listening with her to the far-down moanOf the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,And rain came on that did not hinder talk,Or damp your flashing facile gaietyIn turning home, despite the slow wet walkBy crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;If you had known You would lay roses,Fifty years thence, on her monument, […]

Last Post soundedAcross the meadTo where he loiteredWith absent heed.Five years beforeIn the evening thereHad flown that callTo him and his Dear.“You’ll never come back;Good-bye!” she had said;“Here I’ll be living,And my Love dead!” Those closing minimsHad been as shafts dartingThrough him and her pressedIn that last parting;They thrilled him not now,In the selfsame placeWith […]

(SONG: Minor) I look in her face and say,“Sing as you used to singAbout Love’s blossoming”;But she hints not Yea or Nay. “Sing, then, that Love’s a pain,If, Dear, you think it so,Whether it be or no;”But dumb her lips remain. I go to a far-off room,A faint song ghosts my ear;WHICH song I cannot […]

“Why do you sit, O pale thin man, At the end of the room By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan? –It is cold as a tomb, And there’s not a spark within the grate; And the jingling wires Are as vain desires That have lagged too late.” “Why do I? Alas, far […]

(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south to the Channel coast.) Why go the east road now? . . .That way a youth went on a morrowAfter mirth, and he brought back sorrowPainted upon his browWhy go the […]

Yes; such it was;Just those two seasons unsought,Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;Moving, as straws,Hearts quick as ours in those days;Going like wind, too, and rated as noughtSave as the prelude to playsSoon to come–larger, life-fraught:Yes; such it was. “Nought” it was called,Even by ourselves–that which springsOut of the years for all flesh, first […]

Dear, think not that they will forget you:–If craftsmanly art should be mineI will build up a temple, and set youTherein as its shrine. They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”–Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,That a man heaped this splendour upon her;None now knows his name.”

These summer landscapes–clump, and copse, and croft –Woodland and meadowland–here hung aloft,Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft, Seem caught from the immediate season’s yieldI saw last noonday shining over the field,By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealed The saps that in their live originals climb;Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mimeJust […]

Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared:“These wretched children romping in my parkTrample the herbage till the soil is bared,And yap and yell from early morn till dark!Go keep them harnessed to their set routines:Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay;For green remembrance there are better meansThan offspring, who but wish their sires away.” Sir […]

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,And thence thread a jungle of grass:Hurdles and stiles scarce visible standAbove the lush stems as I pass. Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,And seem to reveal a dim senseThat amid such ambitious and elbow-high greenThey make a mean show as a fence. Elsewhere the mead is possessed of […]

She did not turn,But passed foot-faint with averted headIn her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,Though I leaned over the gate that ledFrom where we waited with table spread;But she did not turn:Why was she near there if love had fled? She did not turn,Though the gate was whence I had often spedIn the […]

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,Sir or Madam,A little girl here sepultured.Once I flit-fluttered like a birdAbove the grass, as now I waveIn daisy shapes above my grave,All day cheerily,All night eerily! – I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”Sir or Madam;In shingled oak my bones were pent;Hence more than a hundred years I spentIn […]

(SONG: Minor Mode) ‘Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,When yellow begins to show in the leaf,That your old gamut changed its chimeFrom those true tones–of span so brief! –That met my beats of joy, of grief,As rhyme meets rhyme. So sank I from my high sublime!We faced but chancewise after that,And never I knew or […]