(With thoughts of Leslie Stephen) (June 1897) Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim; Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams Upon my nearing vision, less it seems A looming Alp-height than a guise of him Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, Of […]

Where we made the fire, In the summer time, Of branch and briar On the hill to the sea I slowly climb Through winter mire, And scan and trace The forsaken place Quite readily. Now a cold wind blows, And the grass is gray, But the spot still shows As a burnt circle–aye, And stick-ends, […]

I I look upon the map that hangs by me – Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry – And I mark a jutting height Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea. II –‘Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry; Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked […]

I I shall rot here, with those whom in their day You never knew, And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay, Met not my view, Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you. II No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower, While earth endures, Will fall on my mound and within the […]

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even […]

My spirit will not haunt the mound Above my breast, But travel, memory-possessed, To where my tremulous being found Life largest, best. My phantom-footed shape will go When nightfall grays Hither and thither along the ways I and another used to know In backward days. And there you’ll find me, if a jot You still […]

How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, And never as yet a tinct of spring Has shown in […]

The ten hours’ light is abating, And a late bird flies across, Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, Give their black heads a toss. Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, Float past like specks in the eye; I set every tree in my June time, And now they obscure the sky. And the children who […]

I Looking forward to the spring One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet –Sharper pointed than the first – And these later snows–the worst – Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from sun […]

“It is a foolish thing,” said I, “To bear with such, and pass it by; Yet so I do, I know not why!” And at each clash I would surmise That if I had acted otherwise I might have saved me many sighs. But now the only happiness In looking back that I possess – […]

Along the way He walked that day, Watching shapes that reveries limn, And seldom he Had eyes to see The moment that encompassed him. Bright yellowhammers Made mirthful clamours, And billed long straws with a bustling air, And bearing their load Flew up the road That he followed, alone, without interest there. From bank to […]

I wandered to a crude coast Like a ghost; Upon the hills I saw fires – Funeral pyres Seemingly–and heard breaking Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking. And so I never once guessed A Love-nest, Bowered and candle-lit, lay In my way, Till I found a hid hollow, Where I burst on […]

I–AT TEA The kettle descants in a cozy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband’s face, And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy […]

“Ah, are you digging on my grave My loved one?–planting rue?” – “No: yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said, ‘That I should not be true.’” “Then who is digging on my grave? My nearest dearest kin?” – “Ah, no; they sit and […]

It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin Had left, and I hastened in To rejoin you, as I inferred. And when you’d a mind to career Off anywhere–say to town – You were all on a sudden gone Before I had thought thereon, Or noticed […]

“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped, “The soundless cell is in itself relief, For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped At unawares, and at its best but brief.” The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone, Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye, As if the palest of sheet lightnings […]

I found her out there On a slope few see, That falls westwardly To the salt-edged air, Where the ocean breaks On the purple strand, And the hurricane shakes The solid land. I brought her here, And have laid her to rest In a noiseless nest No sea beats near. She will never be stirred […]

Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, – Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such arrows of rain. She who to shelter Her delicate head Would quicken and quicken Each tentative tread If drops chanced […]

Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face–all undiscerned To be in a week the face of the dead, And you told of the charm of that haloed view That never again would beam on you. And on your left you passed the spot Where eight days […]

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow’s dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! Never to bid good-bye, Or give me the […]