A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,And we clasped, and almost kissed;But she was not the woman whomI had promised to meet in the thawing brumeOn that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst. So loosening from me swift she said:“O why, why feign to beThe one I had meant!–to whom I […]

SOMETIME THE DWELLING OF JOHN KEATS O poet, come you haunting hereWhere streets have stolen up all around,And never a nightingale pours oneFull-throated sound? Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,Thought you to find all just the sameHere shining, as in hours of old,If you but came? What will you do in your […]

“Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?‘Twas sad–your husband’s so swift death,And you away! You shouldn’t have left him:It hastened his last breath.” “Dame, I am not the lady you think me;I know not her, nor know her name;I’ve come to lodge here–a friendless woman;My health my only aim.” She came; she lodged. Wherever she […]

I sang that song on Sunday,To witch an idle while,I sang that song on Monday,As fittest to beguile;I sang it as the year outwore,And the new slid in;I thought not what might shape beforeAnother would begin. I sang that song in summer,All unforeknowingly,To him as a new-comerFrom regions strange to me:I sang it when in […]

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:– ‘Twas not so in that August–full-rayed, fine–When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles. Or was there then no noted radiancyOf summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,Gilt over by the light I bore in me,And was the waste world just the […]

“It was not you I came to please,Only myself,” flipped she;“I like this spot of phantasies,And thought you far from me.”But O, he was the secret spellThat led her to the lea! “It was not she who shaped my ways,Or works, or thoughts,” he said.“I scarcely marked her living days,Or missed her much when dead.”But […]

I When moiling seems at ceaseIn the vague void of night-time,And heaven’s wide roomage stormlessBetween the dusk and light-time,And fear at last is formless,We call the allurement Peace. II Peace, this hid riot, Change,This revel of quick-cued mumming,This never truly being,This evermore becoming,This spinner’s wheel onfleeingOutside perception’s range. 1917.

(SONG) I was not he–the manWho used to pilgrim to your gate,At whose smart step you grew elate,And rosed, as maidens can,For a brief span. It was not I who sangBeside the keys you touched so trueWith note-bent eyes, as if with youIt counted not whence sprangThe voice that rang . . . Yet though […]

A very West-of-Wessex girl,As blithe as blithe could be,Was once well-known to me,And she would laud her native town,And hope and hope that weMight sometime study up and downIts charms in company. But never I squired my Wessex girlIn jaunts to Hoe or streetWhen hearts were high in beat,Nor saw her in the marbled waysWhere […]

To my native placeBent upon returning,Bosom all day burningTo be where my raceWell were known, ’twas much with meThere to dwell in amity. Folk had sought their beds,But I hailed: to view meUnder the moon, out to meSeveral pushed their heads,And to each I told my name,Plans, and that therefrom I came. “Did you? . […]

I The moving sun-shapes on the spray,The sparkles where the brook was flowing,Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,These were the things we wished would stay;But they were going. II Seasons of blankness as of snow,The silent bleed of a world decaying,The moan of multitudes in woe,These were the things we wished would go;But they were staying. […]

I paused to read a letter of hersBy the moon’s cold shine,Eyeing it in the tenderest way,And edging it up to catch each rayUpon her light-penned line.I did not know what years would flowOf her life’s span and mineEre I read another letter of hersBy the moon’s cold shine! I chance now on the last […]

(SONG) I The curtains now are drawn,And the spindrift strikes the glass,Blown up the jagged passBy the surly salt sou’-west,And the sneering glare is goneBehind the yonder crest,While she sings to me:“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,And death may come, […]

Who were the twain that trod this trackSo many times togetherHither and back,In spells of certain and uncertain weather? Commonplace in conduct theyWho wandered to and fro hereDay by day:Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here. The very gravel-path was primThat daily they would follow:Borders trim:Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow. […]

ON ITS SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH UNDER ALLENBY, SEPTEMBER 1918 Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day–When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way–His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain? On […]

(FOR F. E. H.) I sometimes think as here I sitOf things I have done,Which seemed in doing not unfitTo face the sun:Yet never a soul has paused a whitOn such–not one. There was that eager strenuous pressTo sow good seed;There was that saving from distressIn the nick of need;There were those words in the […]

I thought you a fireOn Heron-Plantation Hill,Dealing out mischief the most direTo the chattels of men of hireThere in their vill. But by and byYou turned a yellow-green,Like a large glow-worm in the sky;And then I could descryYour mood and mien. How well I knowYour furtive feminine shape!As if reluctantly you showYou nude of cloud, […]

I Past the hills that peepWhere the leaze is smiling,On and on beguilingCrisply-cropping sheep;Under boughs of brushwoodLinking tree and treeIn a shade of lushwood,There caressed we! II Hemmed by city wallsThat outshut the sunlight,In a foggy dun light,Where the footstep fallsWith a pit-pat wearisomeIn its cadencyOn the flagstones drearisomeThere pressed we! III Where in wild-winged […]

At nine in the morning there passed a church,At ten there passed me by the sea,At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,At two a forest of oak and birch,And then, on a platform, she: A radiant stranger, who saw not me.I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?”But I kept my seat in […]

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,And so do I;When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,And nestlings fly:And the little brown nightingale bills his best,And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,”And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,And citizens dream of the south and west,And so do I. II This is the weather the shepherd shuns,And so […]