Strange the world about me lies, Never yet familiar grown– Still disturbs me with surprise, Haunts me like a face half known. In this house with starry dome, Floored with gemlike plains and seas, Shall I never feel at home, Never wholly be at ease? On from room to room I stray, Yet my Host […]

The mighty poets from their flowing store Dispense like casual alms the careless ore; Through throngs of men their lonely way they go, Let fall their costly thoughts, nor seem to know.– Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless Muse. A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Capriciously […]

Few friends are mine, though many wights there be Who, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim To be myself, and hath my face and name, And whose thin fraud I wink at privily, Account this light impostor very me. What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame? […]

When birds were songless on the bough I heard thee sing. The world was full of winter, thou Wert full of spring. To-day the world’s heart feels anew The vernal thrill, And thine beneath the rueful yew Is wintry chill.

(AUGUST 18, 1890) ‘Twas at this season, year by year, The singer who lies songless here Was wont to woo a less austere, Less deep repose, Where Rotha to Winandermere Unresting flows,– Flows through a land where torrents call To far-off torrents as they fall, And mountains in their cloudy pall Keep ghostly state, And […]

Youth! ere thou be flown away. Surely one last boon to-day Thou’lt bestow– One last light of rapture give, Rich and lordly fugitive! Ere thou go. What, thou canst not? What, all spent? All thy spells of ravishment Pow’rless now? Gone thy magic out of date? Gone, all gone that made thee great?– Follow thou!

Nay, bid me not my cares to leave, Who cannot from their shadow flee. I do but win a short reprieve, ‘Scaping to pleasure and to thee. I may, at best, a moment’s grace, And grant of liberty, obtain; Respited for a little space, To go back into bonds again.

A letter from abroad. I tear Its sheathing open, unaware What treasure gleams within; and there– Like bird from cage– Flutters a curl of golden hair Out of the page. From such a frolic head ’twas shorn! (‘Tis but five years since he was born.) Not sunlight scampering over corn Were merrier thing. A child? […]

Five-and-thirty black slaves, Half-a-hundred white, All their duty but to sing For their Queen’s delight, Now with throats of thunder, Now with dulcet lips, While she rules them royally With her finger-tips! When she quits her palace, All the slaves are dumb– Dumb with dolour till the Queen Back to Court is come: Dumb the […]

Scentless flow’rs I bring thee–yet In thy bosom be they set; In thy bosom each one grows Fragrant beyond any rose. Sweet enough were she who could, In thy heart’s sweet neighbourhood, Some redundant sweetness thus Borrow from that overplus.

Come hither, who grow cloyed to surfeiting With lyric draughts o’ersweet, from rills that rise On Hybla not Parnassus mountain: come With beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave Hither, and see a magic miracle Of happiest science, the bland Attic skies True-mirrored by an English well;–no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with […]

(WITH A VOLUME OF EPIGRAMS) Unto the Lady of The Nook Fly, tiny book. There thou hast lovers–even thou! Fly thither now. Seven years hast thou for honour yearned, And scant praise earned; But ah! to win, at last, such friends, Is full amends.

What! and shall we, with such submissive airs As age demands in reverence from the young, Await these crumbs of praise from Europe flung, And doubt of our own greatness till it bears The signet of your Goethes or Voltaires? We who alone in latter times have sung With scarce less power than Arno’s exiled […]

(FEBRUARY 1888) Spouse whom my sword in the olden time won me, Winning me hatred more sharp than a sword– Mother of children who hiss at or shun me, Curse or revile me, and hold me abhorred– Heiress of anger that nothing assuages, Mad for the future, and mad from the past– Daughter of all […]

(MARCH 1885) March, that comes roaring, maned, with rampant paws, And bleatingly withdraws; March,–’tis the year’s fantastic nondescript, That, born when frost hath nipped The shivering fields, or tempest scarred the hills, Dies crowned with daffodils. The month of the renewal of the earth By mingled death and birth: But, England! in this latest of […]

Under the dark and piny steep We watched the storm crash by: We saw the bright brand leap and leap Out of the shattered sky. The elements were minist’ring To make one mortal blest; For, peal by peal, you did but cling The closer to his breast.

[A Viennese gentleman, who had climbed the Hoch-Koenig without a guide, was found dead, in a sitting posture, near the summit, upon which he had written, “It is cold, and clouds shut out the view.”–Vide the Daily News of September 10, 1891.] So mounts the child of ages of desire, Man, up the steeps of […]

(WITH A VOLUME OF VERSE) Master and mage, our prince of song, whom Time, In this your autumn mellow and serene, Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime; Heir of the riches of the whole world’s rhyme, Dow’r’d with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien, With Arno’s […]

(1885) There is a race of men, who master life, Their victory being inversely as their strife; Who capture by refraining from pursuit; Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit; The earth’s high places who attain to fill, By most indomitably sitting still. While others, full upon the fortress hurled, Lay fiery […]

Just for a day you crossed my life’s dull track, Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame, Went your bright way, and left me to fall back On my own world of poorer deed and aim; To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling ‘mid some, smoke-dimmed town,– In a […]