If there were in my kalendar No Emma, Florence, Mary, What would be my existence now – A hermit’s?–wanderer’s weary? – How should I live, and how Near would be death, or far? Could it have been that other eyes Might have uplit my highway? That fond, sad, retrospective sight Would catch from this dim […]

Something do I see Above the fog that sheets the mead, A figure like to life indeed, Moving along with spectre-speed, Seen by none but me. O the vision keen! – Tripping along to me for love As in the flesh it used to move, Only its hat and plume above The evening fog-fleece seen. […]

I saw him pass as the new day dawned, Murmuring some musical phrase; Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond, And the tired stars thinned their gaze; Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned, But an inner one, giving out rays. Such was the thing in his eye, walking there, […]

The bars are thick with drops that show As they gather themselves from the fog Like silver buttons ranged in a row, And as evenly spaced as if measured, although They fall at the feeblest jog. They load the leafless hedge hard by, And the blades of last year’s grass, While the fallow ploughland turned […]

Lifelong to be Seemed the fair colour of the time; That there was standing shadowed near A spirit who sang to the gentle chime Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear, I did not see. Thus did it sing To the mindless lyre that played indoors As she came to listen for me without: […]

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam In the wet June’s last beam: Like little crossbows animate The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam. Planing up shavings of crystal spray A moor-hen darted out From the bank thereabout, And through the stream-shine ripped his way; […]

(ONOMATOPOEIC) Reticulations creep upon the slack stream’s face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base; The floating-lily leaves rot fast. On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows, Till they arrow off and drop […]

“The king and the queen will stand to the child; ‘Twill be handed down in song; And it’s no more than their deserving, With my lord so faithful at Court so long, And so staunch and strong. “O never before was known such a thing! ‘Twill be a grand time for all; And the beef […]

“I am playing my oldest tunes,” declared she, “All the old tunes I know, – Those I learnt ever so long ago.” – Why she should think just then she’d play them Silence cloaks like snow. When I returned from the town at nightfall Notes continued to pour As when I had left two hours […]

I saw it–pink and white–revealed Upon the white and green; The white and green was a daisied field, The pink and white Ethleen. And as I looked it seemed in kind That difference they had none; The two fair bodiments combined As varied miens of one. A sense that, in some mouldering year, As one […]

I know not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually. I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And […]

I “You on the tower of my factory – What do you see up there? Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach me here?” – “Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach you here.” II “Good. Soon I’ll come and ask you To tell me again thereon . . […]

A MEMORY OF A SISTER The fire advances along the log Of the tree we felled, Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck Till its last hour of bearing knelled. The fork that first my hand would reach And then my foot In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now Sawn, sapless, darkening […]

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.” There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise, And the cliff-side track looks green and fair; I view them talking in quiet glee As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair By the roughest of ways; But another with the […]

When the walls were red That now are seen To be overspread With a mouldy green, A fresh fair head Would often lean From the sunny casement And scan the scene, While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree. But storms have raged Those walls about, And the head has aged That once […]

Ah–it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires! – Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers Since it was silked in its white or pink. Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade, No more a screen from the weakest […]

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave, I saw a little cage That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save Its hops from stage to stage. There was inquiry in its wistful eye, And once it tried to sing; Of him or her who placed it there, and why, No one knew anything.

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath, The sun grows passionate-eyed, And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path; As strenuously we stride, – Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I, All beating by. The air is shaken, the high-road hot, Shadowless swoons the day, The greens are sobered […]

They crush together–a rustling heap of flesh – Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then They part, enmesh, And crush together again, Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose Frightened shut just when it blows. Though all alike in their tinsel livery, And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance, They muster, […]

“That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night Here fiddled four decades of years ago; He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight, Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow. “But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier, And his once dark beard has grown straggling […]