JAMES THOMSON
1834-1882
In the Train
AS we rush, as we rush in the Train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above the plain
Come flying on our track.
All the beautiful stars of the sky,
The silver doves of the forest of Night,
Over the dull earth swarm and fly,
Companions of our flight.
We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!
Sunday up the River
MY love o’er the water bends dreaming;
It glideth and glideth away:
She sees there her own beauty, gleaming
Through shadow and ripple and spray.
O tell her, thou murmuring river,
As past her your light wavelets roll,
How steadfast that image for ever
Shines pure in pure depths of my soul.
Gifts
GIVE a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.
Give a man a pipe he can smoke,
Give a man a book he can read:
And his home is bright with a calm delight,
Though the room be poor indeed.
Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, O my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
At home, on land, on sea.
The Vine
THE wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:
Sits long and arises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.
WILLIAM MORRIS
1834-1896
Summer Dawn
PRAY but one prayer for me ’twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips
Faint and gray ’twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.
Love is enough
LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
The Nymph’s Song to Hylas
I KNOW a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.
And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillar’d house is there,
And though the apple boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before!
There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the place two fair streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea;
The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.
For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskill’d to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek.
Yet tottering as I am, and weak,
Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place;
To seek the unforgotten face
Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea.
RODEN BERKELEY WRIOTHESLEY NOEL
1834-1894
The Water-Nymph and the Boy
I FLUNG me round him,
I drew him under;
I clung, I drown’d him,
My own white wonder!...
Father and mother,
Weeping and wild,
Came to the forest,
Calling the child,
Came from the palace,
Down to the pool,
Calling my darling,
My beautiful!
Under the water,
Cold and so pale!
Could it be love made
Beauty to fail?
Ah me for mortals!
In a few moons,
If I had left him,
After some Junes
He would have faded,
Faded away,
He, the young monarch, whom
All would obey,
Fairer than day;
Alien to springtime,
Joyless and gray,
He would have faded,
Faded away,
Moving a mockery,
Scorn’d of the day!
Now I have taken him
All in his prime,
Saved from slow poisoning
Pitiless Time,
Fill’d with his happiness,
One with the prime,
Saved from the cruel
Dishonour of Time.
Laid him, my beautiful,
Laid him to rest,
Loving, adorable,
Softly to rest,
Here in my crystalline,
Here in my breast!
The Old
THEY are waiting on the shore
For the bark to take them home:
They will toil and grieve no more;
The hour for release hath come.
All their long life lies behind
Like a dimly blending dream:
There is nothing left to bind
To the realms that only seem.
They are waiting for the boat;
There is nothing left to do:
What was near them grows remote,
Happy silence falls like dew;
Now the shadowy bark is come,
And the weary may go home.
By still water they would rest
In the shadow of the tree:
After battle sleep is best,
After noise, tranquillity.
THOMAS ASHE
1836-1889
Meet We no Angels, Pansie?
CAME, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet,
In white, to find her lover;
The grass grew proud beneath her feet,
The green elm-leaves above her:—
Meet we no angels, Pansie?
She said, ‘We meet no angels now’;
And soft lights stream’d upon her;
And with white hand she touch’d a bough;
She did it that great honour:—
What! meet no angels, Pansie?
O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,
Down-dropp’d brown eyes, so tender!
Then what said I? Gallant replies
Seem flattery, and offend her:—
But—meet no angels, Pansie?
To Two Bereaved
YOU must be sad; for though it is to Heaven,
’Tis hard to yield a little girl of seven.
Alas, for me ’tis hard my grief to rule,
Who only met her as she went to school;
Who never heard the little lips so sweet
Say even ‘Good-morning,’ though our eyes would meet
As whose would fain be friends! How must you sigh,
Sick for your loss, when even so sad am I,
Who never clasp’d the small hands any day!
Fair flowers thrive round the little grave, I pray.
THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
1836-1914
Wassail Chorus at the Mermaid Tavern
CHRISTMAS knows a merry, merry place,
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place,
Where?
Raleigh.
’Tis by Devon’s glorious halls,
Whence, dear Ben, I come again:
Bright of golden roofs and walls—
El Dorado’s rare domain—
Seem those halls when sunlight launches
Shafts of gold thro’ leafless branches,
Where the winter’s feathery mantle blanches
Field and farm and lane.
Chorus. Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.
Drayton.
’Tis where Avon’s wood-sprites weave
Through the boughs a lace of rime,
While the bells of Christmas Eve
Fling for Will the Stratford-chime
O’er the river-flags emboss’d
Rich with flowery runes of frost—
O’er the meads where snowy tufts are toss’d—
Strains of olden time.
Chorus. Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.
Shakespeare’s Friend.
’Tis, methinks, on any ground
Where our Shakespeare’s feet are set.
There smiles Christmas, holly-crown’d
With his blithest coronet:
Friendship’s face he loveth well:
’Tis a countenance whose spell
Sheds a balm o’er every mead and dell
Where we used to fret.
Chorus. Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.
Heywood.
More than all the pictures, Ben,
Winter weaves by wood or stream,
Christmas loves our London, when
Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam—
Clouds like these, that, curling, take
Forms of faces gone, and wake
Many a lay from lips we loved, and make
London like a dream.
Chorus. Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.
Ben Jonson.
Love’s old songs shall never die,
Yet the new shall suffer proof:
Love’s old drink of Yule brew I
Wassail for new love’s behoof.
Drink the drink I brew, and sing
Till the berried branches swing,
Till our song make all the Mermaid ring—
Yea, from rush to roof.
Finale.
Christmas loves this merry, merry place;
Christmas saith with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
‘Ben, the drink tastes rare of sack and mace;
Rare!’
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
1837-1909
Chorus from ‘Atalanta’
WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces.
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
Hertha
I AM that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.
Before ever land was,
Before ever the sea,
Or soft hair of the grass,
Or fair limbs of the tree,
Or the flesh-colour’d fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.
First life on my sources
First drifted and swam;
Out of me are the forces
That save it or damn;
Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I am.
Beside or above me
Naught is there to go;
Love or unlove me,
Unknow me or know,
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.
I the mark that is miss’d
And the arrows that miss,
I the mouth that is kiss’d
And the breath in the kiss,
The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that is.
I am that thing which blesses
My spirit elate;
That which caresses
With hands uncreate
My limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate.
But what thing dost thou now,
Looking Godward, to cry,
‘I am I, thou art thou,
I am low, thou art high’?
I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou art I.
I the grain and the furrow,
The plough-cloven clod
And the ploughshare drawn thorough,
The germ and the sod,
The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God.
Hast thou known how I fashion’d thee,
Child, underground?
Fire that impassion’d thee,
Iron that bound,
Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or found?
Canst thou say in thine heart
Thou hast seen with thine eyes
With what cunning of art
Thou wast wrought in what wise,
By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies?
Who hath given, who hath sold it thee,
Knowledge of me?
Has the wilderness told it thee?
Hast thou learnt of the sea?
Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee?
Have I set such a star
To show light on thy brow
That thou sawest from afar
What I show to thee now?
Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou?
What is here, dost thou know it?
What was, hast thou known?
Prophet nor poet
Nor tripod nor throne
Nor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone.
Mother, not maker,
Born, and not made;
Though her children forsake her,
Allured or afraid,
Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have pray’d.
A creed is a rod,
And a crown is of night;
But this thing is God,
To be man with thy might,
To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light.
I am in thee to save thee,
As my soul in thee saith;
Give thou as I gave thee,
Thy life-blood and breath,
Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red fruit of thy death.
Be the ways of thy giving
As mine were to thee;
The free life of thy living,
Be the gift of it free;
Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me.
O children of banishment,
Souls overcast,
Were the lights ye see vanish meant
Alway to last,
Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.
I that saw where ye trod
The dim paths of the night
Set the shadow call’d God
In your skies to give light;
But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight.
The tree many-rooted
That swells to the sky
With frondage red-fruited,
The life-tree am I;
In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.
But the Gods of your fashion
That take and that give,
In their pity and passion
That scourge and forgive,
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live.
My own blood is what stanches
The wounds in my bark;
Stars caught in my branches
Make day of the dark,
And are worshipp’d as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.
Where dead ages hide under
The live roots of the tree,
In my darkness the thunder
Makes utterance of me;
In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea.
That noise is of Time,
As his feathers are spread
And his feet set to climb
Through the boughs overhead,
And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread.
The storm-winds of ages
Blow through me and cease,
The war-wind that rages,
The spring-wind of peace,
Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase.
All sounds of all changes,
All shadows and lights
On the world’s mountain-ranges
And stream-riven heights,
Whose tongue is the wind’s tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights;
All forms of all faces,
All works of all hands
In unsearchable places
Of time-stricken lands,
All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.
Though sore be my burden
And more than ye know,
And my growth have no guerdon
But only to grow,
Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.
These too have their part in me,
As I too in these;
Such fire is at heart in me,
Such sap is this tree’s,
Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.
In the spring-colour’d hours
When my mind was as May’s
There brake forth of me flowers
By centuries of days,
Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.
And the sound of them springing
And smell of their shoots
Were as warmth and sweet singing
And strength to my roots;
And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.
I bid you but be;
I have need not of prayer;
I have need of you free
As your mouths of mine air;
That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.
More fair than strange fruit is
Of faiths ye espouse;
In me only the root is
That blooms in your boughs;
Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.
In the darkening and whitening
Abysses adored,
With dayspring and lightning
For lamp and for sword,
God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord.
O my sons, O too dutiful
Toward Gods not of me,
Was not I enough beautiful?
Was it hard to be free?
For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see.
Lo, wing’d with world’s wonders,
With miracles shod,
With the fires of his thunders
For raiment and rod,
God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God.
For his twilight is come on him,
His anguish is here;
And his spirits gaze dumb on him,
Grown gray from his fear;
And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year.
Thought made him and breaks him,
Truth slays and forgives;
But to you, as time takes him,
This new thing it gives,
Even love, the belovèd Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.
For truth only is living,
Truth only is whole,
And the love of his giving
Man’s polestar and pole;
Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.
One birth of my bosom;
One beam of mine eye;
One topmost blossom
That scales the sky;
Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.
Ave atque Vale
(IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE)
SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,
Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore
Trod by no tropic feet?
For always thee the fervid languid glories
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave
Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.
Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,
The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear
Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,
Blind gods that cannot spare.
Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:
Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.
O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,
That were athirst for sleep and no more life
And no more love, for peace and no more strife!
Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping
Spirit and body and all the springs of song,
Is it well now where love can do no wrong,
Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang
Behind the unopening closure of her lips?
Is it not well where soul from body slips
And flesh from bone divides without a pang
As dew from flower-bell drips?
It is enough; the end and the beginning
Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.
O hand unclasp’d of unbeholden friend,
For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumph and no labour and no lust,
Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.
O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught,
Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night
With obscure finger silences your sight,
Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,
Sleep, and have sleep for light.
Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,
Such as thy vision here solicited,
Under the shadow of her fair vast head,
The deep division of prodigious breasts,
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,
The weight of awful tresses that still keep
The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests
Where the wet hill-winds weep?
Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?
O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,
Hast thou found sown, what gather’d in the gloom?
What of despair, of rapture, of derision,
What of life is there, what of ill or good?
Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood?
Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,
The faint fields quicken any terrene root,
In low lands where the sun and moon are mute
And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers
At all, or any fruit?
Alas, but though my flying song flies after,
O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet
Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,
Some dim derision of mysterious laughter
From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,
Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine’s veil’d head,
Some little sound of unregarded tears
Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,
And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs—
These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,
Sees only such things rise.
Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,
Far too far off for thought or any prayer.
What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?
What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?
Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,
Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,
Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.
Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,
The low light fails us in elusive skies,
Still the foil’d earnest ear is deaf, and blind
Are still the eluded eyes.
Not thee, O never thee, in all time’s changes,
Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,
The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll
I lay my hand on, and not death estranges
My spirit from communion of thy song—
These memories and these melodies that throng
Veil’d porches of a Muse funereal—
These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold
As though a hand were in my hand to hold,
Or through mine ears a mourning musical
Of many mourners roll’d.
I among these, I also, in such station
As when the pyre was charr’d, and piled the sods.
And offering to the dead made, and their gods,
The old mourners had, standing to make libation,
I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead
Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed
Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,
And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear,
And what I may of fruits in this chill’d air,
And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb
A curl of sever’d hair.
But by no hand nor any treason stricken,
Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,
The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,
Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken.
There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear
Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear
Down the opening leaves of holy poets’ pages.
Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;
But bending us-ward with memorial urns
The most high Muses that fulfil all ages
Weep, and our God’s heart yearns.
For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often
Among us darkling here the lord of light
Makes manifest his music and his might
In hearts that open and in lips that soften
With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.
Thy lips indeed he touch’d with bitter wine,
And nourish’d them indeed with bitter bread;
Yet surely from his hand thy soul’s food came,
The fire that scarr’d thy spirit at his flame
Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed
Who feeds our hearts with fame.
Therefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting,
God of all suns and songs, he too bends down
To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,
And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.
Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,
Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,
Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,
And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs
Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,
And over thine irrevocable head
Sheds light from the under skies.
And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,
And stains with tears her changing bosom chill;
That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,
That thing transformed which was the Cytherean,
With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine
Long since, and face no more call’d Erycine—
A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.
Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell
Did she, a sad and second prey, compel
Into the footless places once more trod,
And shadows hot from hell.
And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,
No choral salutation lure to light
A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night
And love’s tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.
There is no help for these things; none to mend,
And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,
Will make death clear or make life durable.
Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine
And with wild notes about this dust of thine
At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell
And wreathe an unseen shrine.
Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,
If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;
And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.
Out of the mystic and the mournful garden
Where all day through thine hands in barren braid
Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,
Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray,
Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,
Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,
Shall death not bring us all as thee one day
Among the days departed?
For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,
Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.
Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,
And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,
With sadder than the Niobean womb,
And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.
Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done;
There lies not any troublous thing before,
Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,
For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,
All waters as the shore.
Itylus
SWALLOW, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
The soft south whither thine heart is set?
Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
But I, fulfill’d of my heart’s desire,
Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
From tawny body and sweet small mouth
Feed the heart of the night with fire.
I the nightingale all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
All spring through till the spring be done,
Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
Take flight and follow and find the sun.
Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
Though all things feast in the spring’s guest-chamber,
How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
Till life forget and death remember,
Till thou remember and I forget.
Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?
O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
My heart in me is a molten ember
And over my head the waves have met.
But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow
Could I forget or thou remember,
Couldst thou remember and I forget.
O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
The heart’s division divideth us.
Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.
O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
I pray thee sing not a little space.
Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
The woven web that was plain to follow,
The small slain body, the flower-like face,
Can I remember if thou forget?
O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child’s blood crying yet,
Who hath remember’d me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
1837
Earliest Spring
TOSSING his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and ’thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.
But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak’s chill core, under the gathering drift.
Nay, to earth’s life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes—
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect—as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.
BRET HARTE
1839-1902
What the Bullet sang
O JOY of creation,
To be!
O rapture, to fly
And be free!
Be the battle lost or won,
Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love—the one
Born for me!
I shall know him where he stands
All alone,
With the power in his hands
Not o’erthrown;
I shall know him by his face,
By his godlike front and grace;
I shall hold him for a space
All my own!
It is he—O my love!
So bold!
It is I—all thy love
Foretold!
It is I—O love, what bliss!
Dost thou answer to my kiss?
O sweetheart! what is this
Lieth there so cold?
JOHN TODHUNTER
1839-1916
Maureen
O YOU plant the pain in my heart with your wistful eyes,
Girl of my choice, Maureen!
Will you drive me mad for the kisses your shy, sweet mouth denies,
Maureen?
Like a walking ghost I am, and no words to woo,
White rose of the West, Maureen:
For it’s pale you are, and the fear that’s on you is over me too,
Maureen!
Sure it’s one complaint that’s on us, asthore, this day,
Bride of my dreams, Maureen:
The smart of the bee that stung us his honey must cure, they say,
Maureen!
I’ll coax the light to your eyes, and the rose to your face,
Mavourneen, my own Maureen!
When I feel the warmth of your breast, and your nest is my arm’s embrace,
Maureen!
O where was the King o’ the World that day—only me?
My one true love, Maureen!
And you the Queen with me there, and your throne in my heart, machree,
Maureen!
Aghadoe
THERE’s a glade in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There’s a green and silent glade in Aghadoe,
Where we met, my love and I, Love’s fair planet in the sky,
O’er that sweet and silent glade in Aghadoe.
There’s a glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There’s a deep and secret glen in Aghadoe,
Where I hid from the eyes of the red-coats and their spies,
That year the trouble came to Aghadoe.
O, my curse on one black heart in Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
On Shaun Dhu, my mother’s son in Aghadoe!
When your throat fries in hell’s drouth, salt the flame be in your mouth,
For the treachery you did in Aghadoe!
For they track’d me to that glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
When the price was on his head in Aghadoe:
O’er the mountain, through the wood, as I stole to him with food,
Where in hiding lone he lay in Aghadoe.
But they never took him living in Aghadoe, Aghadoe;
With the bullets in his heart in Aghadoe,
There he lay, the head, my breast keeps the warmth of where ’twould rest,
Gone, to win the traitor’s gold, from Aghadoe!
I walk’d to Mallow town from Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
Brought his head from the gaol’s gate to Aghadoe;
Then I cover’d him with fern, and I piled on him the cairn,
Like an Irish King he sleeps in Aghadoe.
O, to creep into that cairn in Aghadoe, Aghadoe!
There to rest upon his breast in Aghadoe!
Sure your dog for you could die with no truer heart than I,
Your own love, cold on your cairn in Aghadoe.
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT
1840
Song
O FLY not, Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure;
Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay:
For my heart no measure
Knows, nor other treasure
To buy a garland for my love to-day.
And thou, too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
Thou gray-eyed mourner, fly not yet away:
For I fain would borrow
Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
To make a mourning for love’s yesterday.
The voice of Pity, Time’s divine dear Pity,
Moved me to tears: I dared not say them nay,
But passed forth from the city,
Making thus my ditty
Of fair love lost for ever and a day.
The Desolate City
DARK to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens.
Where is she that I loved, the woman with eyes like stars?
Desolate are the streets. Desolate is the city.
A city taken by storm, where none are left but the slain.
Sadly I rose at dawn, undid the latch of my shutters,
Thinking to let in light, but I only let in love.
Birds in the boughs were awake; I listen’d to their chaunting;
Each one sang to his love; only I was alone.
This, I said in my heart, is the hour of life and of pleasure.
Now each creature on earth has his joy, and lives in the sun,
Each in another’s eyes finds light, the light of compassion,
This is the moment of pity, this is the moment of love.
Speak, O desolate city! Speak, O silence in sadness!
Where is she that I loved in my strength, that spoke to my soul?
Where are those passionate eyes that appeal’d to my eyes in passion?
Where is the mouth that kiss’d me, the breast I laid to my own?
Speak, thou soul of my soul, for rage in my heart is kindled.
Tell me, where didst thou flee in the day of destruction and fear?
See, my arms still enfold thee, enfolding thus all heaven,
See, my desire is fulfill’d in thee, for it fills the earth.
Thus in my grief I lamented. Then turn’d I from the window,
Turn’d to the stair, and the open door, and the empty street,
Crying aloud in my grief, for there was none to chide me,
None to mock my weakness, none to behold my tears.
Groping I went, as blind. I sought her house, my belovèd’s.
There I stopp’d at the silent door, and listen’d and tried the latch.
Love, I cried, dost thou slumber? This is no hour for slumber,
This is the hour of love, and love I bring in my hand.
I knew the house, with its windows barr’d, and its leafless fig-tree,
Climbing round by the doorstep, the only one in the street;
I knew where my hope had climb’d to its goal and there encircled
All that those desolate walls once held, my belovèd’s heart.
There in my grief she consoled me. She loved me when I loved not.
She put her hand in my hand, and set her lips to my lips.
She told me all her pain and show’d me all her trouble.
I, like a fool, scarce heard, hardly return’d her kiss.
Love, thy eyes were like torches. They changed as I beheld them.
Love, thy lips were like gems, the seal thou settest on my life.
Love, if I loved not then, behold this hour thy vengeance;
This is the fruit of thy love and thee, the unwise grown wise.
Weeping strangled my voice. I call’d out, but none answer’d;
Blindly the windows gazed back at me, dumbly the door;
She whom I love, who loved me, look’d not on my yearning,
Gave me no more her hands to kiss, show’d me no more her soul.
Therefore the earth is dark to me, the sunlight blackness,
Therefore I go in tears and alone, by night and day;
Therefore I find no love in heaven, no light, no beauty,
A heaven taken by storm, where none are left but the slain!
With Esther
HE who has once been happy is for aye
Out of destruction’s reach. His fortune then
Holds nothing secret; and Eternity,
Which is a mystery to other men,
Has like a woman given him its joy.
Time is his conquest. Life, if it should fret,
Has paid him tribute. He can bear to die,
He who has once been happy! When I set
The world before me and survey its range,
Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,
The shreds of pleasure which for lack of change
Men wrap around them and call happiness,
The poor delights which are the tale and sum
Of the world’s courage in its martyrdom;
When I hear laughter from a tavern door,
When I see crowds agape and in the rain
Watching on tiptoe and with stifled roar
To see a rocket fired or a bull slain,
When misers handle gold, when orators
Touch strong men’s hearts with glory till they weep,
When cities deck their streets for barren wars
Which have laid waste their youth, and when I keep
Calmly the count of my own life and see
On what poor stuff my manhood’s dreams were fed
Till I too learn’d what dole of vanity
Will serve a human soul for daily bread,
—Then I remember that I once was young
And lived with Esther the world’s gods among.
To Manon, on his Fortune in loving Her
I DID not choose thee, dearest. It was Love
That made the choice, not I. Mine eyes were blind
As a rude shepherd’s who to some lone grove
His offering brings and cares not at what shrine
He bends his knee. The gifts alone were mine;
The rest was Love’s. He took me by the hand,
And fired the sacrifice, and poured the wine,
And spoke the words I might not understand.
I was unwise in all but the dear chance
Which was my fortune, and the blind desire
Which led my foolish steps to Love’s abode,
And youth’s sublime unreason’d prescience
Which raised an altar and inscribed in fire
Its dedication To the Unknown God.
St. Valentines Day
TO-day, all day, I rode upon the down,
With hounds and horsemen, a brave company
On this side in its glory lay the sea,
On that the Sussex weald, a sea of brown.
The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,
And still we gallop’d on from gorse to gorse:
And once, when check’d, a thrush sang, and my horse
Prick’d his quick ears as to a sound unknown.
I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even
Better than all by this, that through my chase
In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven
I seem’d to see and follow still your face.
Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,
My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.
Gibraltar
Seven weeks of sea, and twice seven days of storm
Upon the huge Atlantic, and once more
We ride into still water and the calm
Of a sweet evening, screen’d by either shore
Of Spain and Barbary. Our toils are o’er,
Our exile is accomplish’d. Once again
We look on Europe, mistress as of yore
Of the fair earth and of the hearts of men.
Ay, this is the famed rock which Hercules
And Goth and Moor bequeath’d us. At this door
England stands sentry. God! to hear the shrill
Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze,
And at the summons of the rock gun's roar
To see her red coats marching from the hill!
Written at Florence
O world, in very truth thou art too young;
When wilt thou learn to wear the garb of age?
World, with thy covering of yellow flowers,
Hast thou forgot what generations sprung
Out of thy loins and loved thee and are gone?
Hast thou no place in all their heritage
Where thou dost only weep, that I may come
Nor fear the mockery of thy yellow flowers?
O world, in very truth thou art too young.
The heroic wealth of passionate emprize
Built thee fair cities for thy naked plains:
How hast thou set thy summer growth among
The broken stones which were their palaces!
Hast thou forgot the darkness where he lies
Who made thee beautiful, or have thy bees
Found out his grave to build their honeycombs?
O world, in very truth thou art too young:
They gave thee love who measured out thy skies,
And, when they found for thee another star,
Who made a festival and straightway hung
The jewel on thy neck. O merry world,
Hast thou forgot the glory of those eyes
Which first look'd love in thine? Thou hast not furl'd
One banner of thy bridal car for them.
O world, in very truth thou art too young.
There was a voice which sang about thy spring,
Till winter froze the sweetness of his lips,
And lo, the worms had hardly left his tongue
Before thy nightingales were come again.
O world, what courage hast thou thus to sing?
Say, has thy merriment no secret pain,
No sudden weariness that thou art young?
The Two Highwaymen
I LONG have had a quarrel set with Time
Because he robb’d me. Every day of life
Was wrested from me after bitter strife:
I never yet could see the sun go down
But I was angry in my heart, nor hear
The leaves fall in the wind without a tear
Over the dying summer. I have known
No truce with Time nor Time’s accomplice, Death.
The fair world is the witness of a crime
Repeated every hour. For life and breath
Are sweet to all who live; and bitterly
The voices of these robbers of the heath
Sound in each ear and chill the passer-by.
—What have we done to thee, thou monstrous Time?
What have we done to Death that we must die?
HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON
b. 1840
A Garden Song
Here in this sequester’d close
Bloom the hyacinth and rose,
Here beside the modest stock
Flaunts the flaring hollyhock;
Here, without a pang, one sees
Ranks, conditions, and degrees.
All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting-place;
Peach and apricot and fig
Here will ripen and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,—
More had not Alcinoüs!
Here, in alleys cool and green,
Far ahead the thrush is seen;
Here along the southern wall
Keeps the bee his festival;
All is quiet else—afar
Sounds of toil and turmoil are.
Here be shadows large and long;
Here be spaces meet for song;
Grant, O garden-god, that I,
Now that none profane is nigh,—
Now that mood and moment please,—
Find the fair Pierides!
Urceus Exit
Triolet
I INTENDED an Ode,
And it turn’d to a Sonnet
It began à la mode,
I intended an Ode;
But Rose crossed the road
In her latest new bonnet;
I intended an Ode;
And it turn’d to a Sonnet.
In After Days
Rondeau
IN after days when grasses high
O’er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honour’d dust,
I shall not question nor reply.
I shall not see the morning sky;
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must
In after days!
But yet, now living, fain would I
That some one then should testify,
Saying—‘He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust.’
Will none?—Then let my memory die
In after days!
HENRY CLARENCE KENDALL
1841-1882
Mooni
HE that is by Mooni now
Sees the water-sapphires gleaming
Where the River Spirit, dreaming,
Sleeps by fall and fountain streaming
Under lute of leaf and bough!—
Hears what stamp of Storm with stress is,
Psalms from unseen wildernesses
Deep amongst far hill-recesses—
He that is by Mooni now.
Yea, for him by Mooni’s marge
Sings the yellow-hair’d September,
With the face the gods remember,
When the ridge is burnt to ember,
And the dumb sea chains the barge!
Where the mount like molten brass is,
Down beneath fern-feather’d passes
Noonday dew in cool green grasses
Gleams on him by Mooni’s marge.
Who that dwells by Mooni yet,
Feels in flowerful forest arches
Smiting wings and breath that parches
Where strong Summer’s path of march is,
And the suns in thunder set!
Housed beneath the gracious kirtle
Of the shadowy water-myrtle—
Winds may kiss with heat and hurtle,
He is safe by Mooni yet!
Days there were when he who sings
(Dumb so long through passion’s losses)
Stood where Mooni’s water crosses
Shining tracks of green-hair’d mosses,
Like a soul with radiant wings:
Then the psalm the wind rehearses—
Then the song the stream disperses—
Lent a beauty to his verses,
Who to-night of Mooni sings.
Ah, the theme—the sad, gray theme!
Certain days are not above me,
Certain hearts have ceased to love me,
Certain fancies fail to move me,
Like the effluent morning dream.
Head whereon the white is stealing,
Heart whose hurts are past all healing,
Where is now the first, pure feeling?
Ah, the theme—the sad, gray theme!
. . .
Still to be by Mooni cool—
Where the water-blossoms glister,
And by gleaming vale and vista
Sits the English April’s sister,
Soft and sweet and wonderful!
Just to rest beneath the burning
Outer world—its sneers and spurning—
Ah, my heart—my heart is yearning
Still to be by Mooni cool!
ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O’SHAUGHNESSY
1844-1881
Ode
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Song
I MADE another garden, yea,
For my new Love:
I left the dead rose where it lay
And set the new above.
Why did my Summer not begin?
Why did my heart not haste?
My old Love came and walk’d therein,
And laid the garden waste.
She enter’d with her weary smile,
Just as of old;
She look’d around a little while
And shiver’d with the cold:
Her passing touch was death to all,
Her passing look a blight;
She made the white rose-petals fall,
And turn’d the red rose white.
Her pale robe clinging to the grass
Seem’d like a snake
That bit the grass and ground, alas!
And a sad trail did make.
She went up slowly to the gate,
And then, just as of yore,
She turn’d back at the last to wait
And say farewell once more.
The Fountain of Tears
IF you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of Sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting.
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length,—to the Fountain of Tears.
Very peaceful the place is, and solely
For piteous lamenting and sighing,
And those who come living or dying
Alike from their hopes and their fears;
Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,
And statues that cover their faces:
But out of the gloom springs the holy
And beautiful Fountain of Tears.
And it flows and it flows with a motion
So gentle and lovely and listless,
And murmurs a tune so resistless
To him who hath suffer’d and hears—
You shall surely—without a word spoken,
Kneel down there and know your heart broken,
And yield to the long-curb’d emotion
That day by the Fountain of Tears.
For it grows and it grows, as though leaping
Up higher the more one is thinking;
And ever its tunes go on sinking
More poignantly into the ears:
Yea, so blessèd and good seems that fountain,
Reach’d after dry desert and mountain,
You shall fall down at length in your weeping
And bathe your sad face in the tears.
Then alas! while you lie there a season
And sob between living and dying,
And give up the land you were trying
To find ’mid your hopes and your fears;
—O the world shall come up and pass o’er you,
Strong men shall not stay to care for you,
Nor wonder indeed for what reason
Your way should seem harder than theirs.
But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses
And look how the cold world appears—
O perhaps the mere silences round you—
All things in that place Grief hath found you—
Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting,
May soothe you somewhat through your tears.
You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes
Your face, as though some one had kiss’d you;
Or think at least some one who miss’d you
Had sent you a thought,—if that cheers;
Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken,
May pass for a tender word spoken:
—Enough, while around you there rushes
That life-drowning torrent of tears.
And the tears shall flow faster and faster,
Brim over and baffle resistance,
And roll down blear’d roads to each distance
Of past desolation and years;
Till they cover the place of each sorrow,
And leave you no past and no morrow:
For what man is able to master
And stem the great Fountain of Tears?
But the floods and the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
—O into what bosom, I wonder,
Is pour’d the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God, then, the Maker and Father—
May He find a place for the tears!
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY
1844-1890
A White Rose
THE red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
ROBERT BRIDGES
1844
My Delight and Thy Delight
MY delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:
My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher:
Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.
Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.
Love can tell, and love alone,
Whence the million stars were strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:
This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
’Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.
Spirits
ANGEL spirits of sleep,
White-robed, with silver hair,
In your meadows fair,
Where the willows weep,
And the sad moonbeam
On the gliding stream
Writes her scatter’d dream:
Angel spirits of sleep,
Dancing to the weir
In the hollow roar
Of its waters deep;
Know ye how men say
That ye haunt no more
Isle and grassy shore
With your moonlit play;
That ye dance not here,
White-robed spirits of sleep,
All the summer night
Threading dances light?
Nightingales
BEAUTIFUL must be the mountains whence ye come,
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!
Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.
Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.
A Passer-by
WHITHER, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest,
When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,
Wilt thoù glìde on the blue Pacific, or rest
In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.
I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:
I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,
And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,
Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare:
Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capp’d grandest
Peak, that is over the feathery palms, more fair
Than thou, so upright, so stately and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhail’d and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow’s line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.
Absence
WHEN my love was away,
Full three days were not sped,
I caught my fancy astray
Thinking if she were dead,
And I alone, alone:
It seem’d in my misery
In all the world was none
Ever so lone as I.
I wept; but it did not shame
Nor comfort my heart: away
I rode as I might, and came
To my love at close of day.
The sight of her still’d my fears,
My fairest-hearted love:
And yet in her eyes were tears:
Which when I questioned of,
‘O now thou art come,’ she cried,
‘’Tis fled: but I thought to-day
I never could here abide,
If thou wert longer away.’
On a Dead Child
PERFECT little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though cold and stark and bare,
The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.
Thy mother’s treasure wert thou;—alas! no longer
To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be
Thy father’s pride:—ah, he
Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.
To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,
Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;
Startling my fancy fond
With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.
Thy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my finger, and holds it:
But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;
Yet feels to my hand as if
’Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.
So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,—
Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!—
Propping thy wise, sad head,
Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?
To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?
Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us
To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling, alone we embark,
And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.
Pater Filio
SENSE with keenest edge unusèd,
Yet unsteel’d by scathing fire;
Lovely feet as yet unbruisèd
On the ways of dark desire;
Sweetest hope that lookest smiling
O’er the wilderness defiling!
Why such beauty, to be blighted
By the swarm of foul destruction?
Why such innocence delighted,
When sin stalks to thy seduction?
All the litanies e’er chaunted
Shall not keep thy faith undaunted.
I have pray’d the sainted Morning
To unclasp her hands to hold thee;
From resignful Eve’s adorning
Stol’n a robe of peace to enfold thee;
With all charms of man’s contriving
Arm’d thee for thy lonely striving.
Me too once unthinking Nature,
—Whence Love’s timeless mockery took me,—
Fashion’d so divine a creature,
Yea, and like a beast forsook me.
I forgave, but tell the measure
Of her crime in thee, my treasure.
Winter Nightfall
THE day begins to droop,—
Its course is done:
But nothing tells the place
Of the setting sun.
The hazy darkness deepens,
And up the lane
You may hear, but cannot see,
The homing wain.
An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by:
Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.
The soaking branches drip,
And all night through
The dropping will not cease
In the avenue.
A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:
He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air:
His heart is worn with work;
He is giddy and sick
If he rise to go as far
As the nearest rick:
He thinks of his morn of life,
His hale, strong years;
And braves as he may the night
Of darkness and tears.
When Death to Either shall come
WHEN Death to either shall come,—
I pray it be first to me,—
Be happy as ever at home,
If so, as I wish, it be.
Possess thy heart, my own;
And sing to the child on thy knee,
Or read to thyself alone
The songs that I made for thee.
ANDREW LANG
1844-1912
The Odyssey
AS one that for a weary space has lain
Lull’d by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine—
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again—
So gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours
They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
1849-1903
Invictus
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Margaritæ Sorori
A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day’s work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplish’d and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather’d to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
England, My England
WHAT have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
Round the world on your bugles blown?
Where shall the watchful sun,
England, my England,
Match the master-work you’ve done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
Down the years on your bugles blown?
Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:—
‘Take and break us: we are yours,
England, my own!
Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but we shall die
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
To the stars on your bugles blown!’
They call you proud and hard,
England, my England:
You with worlds to watch and ward,
England, my own!
You whose mail’d hand keeps the keys
Of such teeming destinies,
You could know nor dread nor ease
Were the Song on your bugles blown,
England,
Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
Mother of Ships whose might,
England, my England,
Is the fierce old Sea’s delight,
England, my own,
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword,
There’s the menace of the Word
In the Song on your bugles blown, England—
Out of heaven on your bugles blown!
EDMUND GOSSE
b. 1849
Revelation
INTO the silver night
She brought with her pale hand
The topaz lanthorn-light,
And darted splendour o’er the land;
Around her in a band,
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
And flapping with their mad wings, fann’d
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.
Behind the thorny pink
Close wall of blossom’d may,
I gazed thro’ one green chink
And saw no more than thousands may,—
Saw sweetness, tender and gay,—
Saw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry,
Saw braided locks more dark than bay,
And flashing eyes decorous, pure, and merry.
With food for furry friends
She pass’d, her lamp and she,
Till eaves and gable-ends
Hid all that saffron sheen from me:
Around my rosy tree
Once more the silver-starry night was shining,
With depths of heaven, dewy and free,
And crystals of a carven moon declining.
Alas! for him who dwells
In frigid air of thought,
When warmer light dispels
The frozen calm his spirit sought;
By life too lately taught
He sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing;
Reels from the joy experience brought,
And dares not clutch what Love was half revealing.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1850-1894
Romance
I WILL make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
In the Highlands
IN the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the hill-recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies—
O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarr’d!
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath!
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.
Requiem
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
T. W. ROLLESTON
b. 1857
The Dead at Clonmacnois
FROM THE IRISH OF ANGUS O’GILLAN
IN a quiet water’d land, a land of roses,
Stands Saint Kieran’s city fair;
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations
Slumber there.
There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham
And the sacred knot thereon.
There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbrè sleep—
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Kieran’s plain of crosses
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh;
Deep the sod above Clan Creidè and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest;
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast.
JOHN DAVIDSON
1857-1909
Song
THE boat is chafing at our long delay,
And we must leave too soon
The spicy sea-pinks and the inborne spray,
The tawny sands, the moon.
Keep us, O Thetis, in our western flight!
Watch from thy pearly throne
Our vessel, plunging deeper into night
To reach a land unknown.
The Last Rose
‘O WHICH is the last rose?’
A blossom of no name.
At midnight the snow came;
At daybreak a vast rose,
In darkness unfurl’d,
O’er-petall’d the world.
Its odourless pallor
Blossom’d forlorn,
Till radiant valour
Established the morn—
Till the night
Was undone
In her fight
With the sun.
The brave orb in state rose,
And crimson he shone first;
While from the high vine
Of heaven the dawn burst,
Staining the great rose
From sky-line to sky-line.
The red rose of morn
A white rose at noon turn’d;
But at sunset reborn
All red again soon burn’d.
Then the pale rose of noonday
Rebloom’d in the night,
And spectrally white
In the light
Of the moon lay.
But the vast rose
Was scentless,
And this is the reason:
When the blast rose
Relentless,
And brought in due season
The snow rose, the last rose
Congeal’d in its breath,
Then came with it treason;
The traitor was Death.
In lee-valleys crowded,
The sheep and the birds
Were frozen and shrouded
In flights and in herds.
In highways
And byways
The young and the old
Were tortured and madden’d
And kill’d by the cold.
But many were gladden’d
By the beautiful last rose,
The blossom of no name
That came when the snow came,
In darkness unfurl’d—
The wonderful vast rose
That fill’d all the world.
WILLIAM WATSON
b. 1858
Song
APRIL, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears,
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
Ode in May
LET me go forth, and share
The overflowing Sun
With one wise friend, or one
Better than wise, being fair,
Where the pewit wheels and dips
On heights of bracken and ling,
And Earth, unto her leaflet tips,
Tingles with the Spring.
What is so sweet and dear
As a prosperous morn in May,
The confident prime of the day,
And the dauntless youth of the year,
When nothing that asks for bliss,
Asking aright, is denied,
And half of the world a bridegroom is,
And half of the world a bride?
The Song of Mingling flows,
Grave, ceremonial, pure,
As once, from lips that endure,
The cosmic descant rose,
When the temporal lord of life,
Going his golden way,
Had taken a wondrous maid to wife
That long had said him nay.
For of old the Sun, our sire,
Came wooing the mother of men,
Earth, that was virginal then,
Vestal fire to his fire.
Silent her bosom and coy,
But the strong god sued and press’d;
And born of their starry nuptial joy
Are all that drink of her breast.
And the triumph of him that begot,
And the travail of her that bore,
Behold they are evermore
As warp and weft in our lot.
We are children of splendour and flame,
Of shuddering, also, and tears.
Magnificent out of the dust we came,
And abject from the Spheres.
O bright irresistible lord!
We are fruit of Earth’s womb, each one,
And fruit of thy loins, O Sun,
Whence first was the seed outpour’d.
To thee as our Father we bow,
Forbidden thy Father to see,
Who is older and greater than thou, as thou
Art greater and older than we.
Thou art but as a word of his speech;
Thou art but as a wave of his hand;
Thou art brief as a glitter of sand
’Twixt tide and tide on his beach;
Thou art less than a spark of his fire,
Or a moment’s mood of his soul:
Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir
That chant the chant of the Whole.
The Great Misgiving
‘NOT ours,’ say some, ‘the thought of death to dread;
Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell:
Life is a feast, and we have banqueted—
Shall not the worms as well?
‘The after-silence, when the feast is o’er,
And void the places where the minstrels stood,
Differs in nought from what hath been before,
And is nor ill nor good.’
Ah, but the Apparition—the dumb sign—
The beckoning finger bidding me forgo
The fellowship, the converse, and the wine,
The songs, the festal glow!
And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit,
And while the purple joy is pass’d about,
Whether ’tis ampler day divinelier lit
Or homeless night without;
And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall see
New prospects, or fall sheer—a blinded thing!
There is, O grave, thy hourly victory,
And there, O death, thy sting.
HENRY CHARLES BEECHING
1859-1919
Prayers
GOD who created me
Nimble and light of limb,
In three elements free,
To run, to ride, to swim:
Not when the sense is dim,
But now from the heart of joy,
I would remember Him:
Take the thanks of a boy.
Jesu, King and Lord,
Whose are my foes to fight,
Gird me with Thy sword
Swift and sharp and bright.
Thee would I serve if I might;
And conquer if I can,
From day-dawn till night,
Take the strength of a man.
Spirit of Love and Truth,
Breathing in grosser clay,
The light and flame of youth,
Delight of men in the fray,
Wisdom in strength’s decay;
From pain, strife, wrong to be free,
This best gift I pray,
Take my spirit to Thee.
Going down Hill on a Bicycle
A BOY’S SONG
WITH lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.
Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:—
‘O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.
‘Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy,
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!’
Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
’Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.
Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.
Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er,
Shall find wings waiting there.
BLISS CARMAN
b. 1861
Why
FOR a name unknown,
Whose fame unblown
Sleeps in the hills
For ever and aye;
For her who hears
The stir of the years
Go by on the wind
By night and day;
And heeds no thing
Of the needs of spring,
Of autumn’s wonder
Or winter’s chill;
For one who sees
The great sun freeze,
As he wanders a-cold
From hill to hill;
And all her heart
Is a woven part
Of the flurry and drift
Of whirling snow;
For the sake of two
Sad eyes and true,
And the old, old love
So long ago.
DOUGLAS HYDE
b. 1861
My Grief on the Sea
FROM THE IRISH
MY grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
And the love of my soul!
Abandon’d, forsaken,
To grief and to care,
Will the sea ever waken
Relief from despair?
My grief and my trouble!
Would he and I were,
In the province of Leinster,
Or County of Clare!
Were I and my darling—
O heart-bitter wound!—
On board of the ship
For America bound.
On a green bed of rushes
All last night I lay,
And I flung it abroad
With the heat of the day.
And my Love came behind me,
He came from the South;
His breast to my bosom,
His mouth to my mouth.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
b. 1862
The Phœnix
BY feathers green, across Casbeen
The pilgrims track the Phœnix flown,
By gems he strew’d in waste and wood,
And jewell’d plumes at random thrown.
Till wandering far, by moon and star,
They stand beside the fruitful pyre,
Where breaking bright with sanguine light
The impulsive bird forgets his sire.
Those ashes shine like ruby wine,
Like bag of Tyrian murex spilt,
The claw, the jowl of the flying fowl
Are with the glorious anguish gilt.
So rare the light, so rich the sight,
Those pilgrim men, on profit bent,
Drop hands and eyes and merchandise,
And are with gazing most content.
HENRY NEWBOLT
b. 1862
He fell among Thieves
‘YE have robb’d,’ said he, ‘ye have slaughtered and made an end,
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?’
‘Blood for our blood,’ they said.
He laugh’d: ‘If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive.’
‘You shall die at dawn,’ said they.
He flung his empty revolver down the slope,
He climb’d alone to the Eastward edge of the trees:
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.
He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
The ravine where the Yassîn river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
Or the far Afghan snows.
He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father’s voice from the terrace below
Calling him down to ride.
He saw the gray little church across the park,
The mounds that hid the loved and honour’d dead;
The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,
The brasses black and red.
He saw the School Close, sunny and green,
The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,
The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between,
His own name over all.
He saw the dark wainscot and timber’d roof,
The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
The Dons on the daïs serene.
He watch’d the liner’s stem ploughing the foam,
He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
He heard the passengers’ voices talking of home,
He saw the flag she flew.
And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his feet,
And strode to his ruin’d camp below the wood;
He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet:
His murderers round him stood.
Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,
The blood-red snow-peaks chill’d to a dazzling white;
He turn’d, and saw the golden circle at last,
Cut by the Eastern height.
‘O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun,
I have lived, I praise and adore Thee.’ A sword swept.
Over the pass the voices one by one
Faded, and the hill slept.
GILBERT PARKER
b. 1862
Reunited
WHEN you and I have play’d the little hour,
Have seen the tall subaltern Life to Death
Yield up his sword; and, smiling, draw the breath,
The first long breath of freedom; when the flower
Of Recompense hath flutter’d to our feet,
As to an actor’s; and, the curtain down,
We turn to face each other all alone—
Alone, we two, who never yet did meet,
Alone, and absolute, and free: O then,
O then, most dear, how shall be told the tale?
Clasp’d hands, press’d lips, and so clasp’d hands again;
No words. But as the proud wind fills the sail,
My love to yours shall reach, then one deep moan
Of joy, and then our infinite Alone.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
b. 1865
Where My Books go
ALL the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.
When You are Old
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
RUDYARD KIPLING
b. 1865
A Dedication
MY new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
If there be good in that I wrought,
Thy hand compell’d it, Master, Thine;
Where I have fail’d to meet Thy thought
I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.
One instant’s toil to Thee denied
Stands all Eternity’s offence;
Of that I did with Thee to guide
To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
Bring’st Eden to the craftsman’s brain,
Godlike to muse o’er his own trade
And manlike stand with God again.
The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
One stone the more swings to her place
In that dread Temple of Thy worth—
It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.
Take not that vision from my ken;
O, whatsoe’er may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no aid from men,
That I may help such men as need!
L’Envoi
THERE’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing:—‘Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover
And your English summer’s done.’
You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!
Ha’ done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass,
We’ve seen the seasons through,
And it’s time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
It’s North you may run to the rime-ring’d sun,
Or South to the blind Horn’s hate;
Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or West to the Golden Gate;
Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
And the wildest tales are true,
And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
The days are sick and cold, and the skies are gray and old,
And the twice-breathed airs blow damp;
And I’d sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll
Of a black Bilbao tramp;
With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass,
And a drunken Dago crew,
And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
From Cadiz Bar on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the sweetest way to me is a ship’s upon the sea
In the heel of the North-East Trade.
Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass,
And the drum of the racing screw,
As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
As she lifts and ’scends on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new?
See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore,
And the fenders grind and heave,
And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate,
And the fall-rope whines through the sheave;
It’s ‘Gang-plank up and in,’ dear lass,
It’s ‘Hawsers warp her through!’
And it’s ‘All clear aft’ on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
We’re backing down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied,
And the sirens hoot their dread!
When foot by foot we creep o’er the hueless viewless deep
To the sob of the questing lead!
It’s down by the Lower Hope, dear lass,
With the Gunfleet Sands in view,
Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light
That holds the hot sky tame,
And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powder’d floors
Where the scared whale flukes in flame!
Her plates are scarr’d by the sun, dear lass,
And her ropes are taut with the dew,
For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
Then home, get her home, where the drunken rollers comb,
And the shouting seas drive by,
And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing,
And the Southern Cross rides high!
Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass,
That blaze in the velvet blue.
They’re all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
They’re God’s own guides on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start—
We’re steaming all too slow,
And it’s twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle
Where the trumpet-orchids blow!
You have heard the call of the off-shore wind
And the voice of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!
The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And the deuce knows what we may do—
But we’re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
We’re down, hull down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.
Recessional
June 22, 1897
GOD of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle-line—
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
Far-call’d our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
b. 1866
Song
SHE’s somewhere in the sunlight strong,
Her tears are in the falling rain,
She calls me in the wind’s soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again.
Yon bird is but her messenger,
The moon is but her silver car;
Yea! sun and moon are sent by her,
And every wistful waiting star.
The Second Crucifixion
LOUD mockers in the roaring street
Say Christ is crucified again:
Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet,
Twice broken His great heart in vain.
I hear, and to myself I smile,
For Christ talks with me all the while.
No angel now to roll the stone
From off His unawaking sleep,
In vain shall Mary watch alone,
In vain the soldiers vigil keep.
Yet while they deem my Lord is dead
My eyes are on His shining head.
Ah! never more shall Mary hear
That voice exceeding sweet and low
Within the garden calling clear:
Her Lord is gone, and she must go.
Yet all the while my Lord I meet
In every London lane and street.
Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain,
And Bartimæus still go blind;
The healing hem shall ne’er again
Be touch’d by suffering humankind.
Yet all the while I see them rest,
The poor and outcast, on His breast.
No more unto the stubborn heart
With gentle knocking shall He plead,
No more the mystic pity start,
For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.
So in the street I hear men say,
Yet Christ is with me all the day.
LAURENCE BINYON
b. 1869
Invocation to Youth
COME then, as ever, like the wind at morning!
Joyous, O Youth, in the agèd world renew
Freshness to feel the eternities around it,
Rain, stars and clouds, light and the sacred dew.
The strong sun shines above thee:
That strength, that radiance bring!
If Winter come to Winter,
When shall men hope for Spring?
O World, be Nobler
O WORLD, be nobler, for her sake!
If she but knew thee what thou art,
What wrongs are borne, what deeds are done
In thee, beneath thy daily sun,
Know’st thou not that her tender heart
For pain and very shame would break?
O World, be nobler, for her sake!
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (‘A. E.’)
b. 1853
By the Margin of the Great Deep
WHEN the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam,
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight’s dream.
When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother’s breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.
From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love
Stray’d away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.
Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primæval being as o’erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.
The Great Breath
ITS edges foam’d with amethyst and rose,
Withers once more the old blue flower of day:
There where the ether like a diamond glows,
Its petals fade away.
A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air;
Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows;
The great deep thrills—for through it everywhere
The breath of Beauty blows.
I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her by deep and deeper breath,
Near’d to the hour when Beauty breathes her last
And knows herself in death.
T. STURGE MOORE
b. 1870
A Duet
‘FLOWERS nodding gaily, scent in air,
Flowers posied, flowers for the hair,
Sleepy flowers, flowers bold to stare——’
‘O pick me some!’
‘Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,
Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper Come,
Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb——’
‘O let me hear.’
‘Eyes so black they draw one trembling near,
Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear,
Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear——’
‘O look at me!’
‘Kisses sadly blown across the sea,
Darkling kisses, kisses fair and free,
Bob-a-cherry kisses ’neath a tree——’
‘O give me one!’
Thus sang a king and queen in Babylon.
FRANCIS THOMPSON
1859-1907
The Poppy
SUMMER set lip to earth’s bosom bare,
And left the flush’d print in a poppy there;
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puff’d it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion’s it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughter’d sank,
And dipp’d its cup in the purpurate shine
When the eastern conduits ran with wine.
Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.
A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty wither’d years.
She turn’d, with the rout of her dusk South hair,
And saw the sleeping gipsy there;
And snatch’d and snapp’d it in swift child’s whim,
With—‘Keep it, long as you live!’—to him.
And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,
Trembled up from a bath of tears;
And joy, like a mew sea-rock’d apart,
Toss’d on the wave of his troubled heart.
For he saw what she did not see,
That—as kindled by its own fervency—
The verge shrivell’d inward smoulderingly:
And suddenly ’twixt his hand and hers
He knew the twenty withered years—
No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.
‘Was never such thing until this hour,’
Low to his heart he said; ‘the flower
Of sleep brings wakening to me,
And of oblivion memory.’
‘Was never this thing to me,’ he said,
‘Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!’
And again to his own heart very low:
‘O child! I love, for I love and know;
‘But you, who love nor know at all
The diverse chambers in Love’s guest-hall,
Where some rise early, few sit long:
In how differing accents hear the throng
His great Pentecostal tongue;
‘Who know not love from amity,
Nor my reported self from me;
A fair fit gift is this, meseems,
You give—this withering flower of dreams.
‘O frankly fickle, and fickly true,
Do you know what the days will do to you?
To your Love and you what the days will do,
O frankly fickle, and fickly true?
‘You have loved me, Fair, three lives—or days:
’Twill pass with the passing of my face.
But where I go, your face goes too,
To watch lest I play false to you.
‘I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover,
Knowing well when certain years are over
You vanish from me to another;
Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.
‘So, frankly fickle, and fickly true!
For my brief life-while I take from you
This token, fair and fit, meseems,
For me—this withering flower of dreams.’
. . .
The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:
The goodly grain and the sun-flush’d sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
I hang ’mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper!
Love! love! your flower of wither’d dream
In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,
Shelter’d and shut in a nook of rhyme,
From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.
Love! I fall into the claws of Time:
But lasts within a leavèd rhyme
All that the world of me esteems—
My wither’d dreams, my wither’d dreams.
HENRY CUST
1861-1917
Non Nobis
NOT unto us, O Lord,
Not unto us the rapture of the day,
The peace of night, or love’s divine surprise,
High heart, high speech, high deeds ’mid honouring eyes;
For at Thy word
All these are taken away.
Not unto us, O Lord:
To us thou givest the scorn, the scourge, the scar,
The ache of life, the loneliness of death,
The insufferable sufficiency of breath;
And with Thy sword
Thou piercest very far.
Not unto us, O Lord:
Nay, Lord, but unto her be all things given—
My light and life and earth and sky be blasted—
But let not all that wealth of loss be wasted:
Let Hell afford
The pavement of her Heaven!
KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON
b. 1861
Sheep and Lambs
ALL in the April morning,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass’d me by on the road.
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass’d me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.
The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry,
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.
Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet:
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.
Rest for the Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.
All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.
FRANCES BANNERMAN
An Upper Chamber
I CAME into the City and none knew me;
None came forth, none shouted ‘He is here!
Not a hand with laurel would bestrew me,
All the way by which I drew anear—
Night my banner, and my herald Fear.
But I knew where one so long had waited
In the low room at the stairway’s height,
Trembling lest my foot should be belated,
Singing, sighing for the long hours’ flight
Towards the moment of our dear delight.
I came into the City when you hail’d me
Saviour, and again your chosen Lord:—
Not one guessing what it was that fail’d me,
While along the way as they adored
Thousands, thousands, shouted in accord.
But through all the joy I knew—I only—
How the hostel of my heart lay bare and cold,
Silent of its music, and how lonely!
Never, though you crown me with your gold,
Shall I find that little chamber as of old!
ALICE MEYNELL
b. 1850
Renouncement
I MUST not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the love that lurks in all delight—
The love of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the dearest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gather’d to thy heart.
The Lady of the Lambs
SHE walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant height
And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Her dreams are innocent at night;
The chastest stars may peep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
DORA SIGERSON
d. 1918
Ireland
’TWAS the dream of a God,
And the mould of His hand,
That you shook ’neath His stroke,
That you trembled and broke
To this beautiful land.
Here He loosed from His hold
A brown tumult of wings,
Till the wind on the sea
Bore the strange melody
Of an island that sings.
He made you all fair,
You in purple and gold,
You in silver and green,
Till no eye that has seen
Without love can behold.
I have left you behind
In the path of the past,
With the white breath of flowers,
With the best of God’s hours,
I have left you at last.
MARGARET L. WOODS
b. 1856
Genius Loci
PEACE, Shepherd, peace! What boots it singing on?
Since long ago grace-giving Phœbus died,
And all the train that loved the stream-bright side
Of the poetic mount with him are gone
Beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron,
In unexplorèd realms of night to hide.
The clouds that strew their shadows far and wide
Are all of Heaven that visits Helicon.
Yet here, where never muse or god did haunt,
Still may some nameless power of Nature stray,
Pleased with the reedy stream’s continual chant
And purple pomp of these broad fields in May.
The shepherds meet him where he herds the kine,
And careless pass him by whose is the gift divine.
R. D. BLACKMORE
1825-1900
Dominus Illuminatio Mea
IN the hour of death, after this life’s whim,
When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim,
And pain has exhausted every limb—
The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him.
When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim,
And the mind can only disgrace its fame,
And a man is uncertain of his own name—
The power of the Lord shall fill this frame.
When the last sigh is heaved, and the last tear shed,
And the coffin is waiting beside the bed,
And the widow and child forsake the dead—
The angel of the Lord shall lift this head.
For even the purest delight may pall,
And power must fail, and the pride must fall,
And the love of the dearest friends grow small—
But the glory of the Lord is all in all.
INDEX
OF AUTHORS
AND FIRST LINES
INDEX OF AUTHORS
The references are to the numbers of the poems
[A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [Q], [R], [S], [T], [V], [W], [Y].
Addison, Joseph, [433].
‘A.E.,’ [872], [873].
Ainslie, Hew, [619].
Akenside, Mark, [461-463].
Alford, Henry, [711].
Allingham, William, [769].
Anonymous, [1-7], [22-29], [50-72], [367-392].
Arnold, Matthew, [747-754].
Ashe, Thomas, [805], [806].
Ayton, Sir Robert, [182], [183].
Baillie, Joanna, [510].
Baillie, Lady Grisel, [430].
Bannerman, Frances, [878].
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia, [474].
Barbour, John, [9].
Barnefield, Richard, [203].
Barnes, William, [658], [659].
Beattie, James, [472].
Beaumont, Francis, [234].
Beaumont, Sir John, [223].
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, [666-668].
Beeching, Henry Charles, [855], [856].
Behn, Aphra, [411], [412].
Benson, Arthur Christopher, [859].
Binyon, Laurence, [870], [871].
Blackmore, R. D., [883].
Blake, William, [483-492].
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, [816-823].
Bowles, William Lisle, [509].
Boyd, Mark Alexander, [114].
Breton, Nicholas, [73], 74 (?).
Bridges, Robert, [832-840].
Brome, Alexander, [354].
Brooke, Lord, [96].
Broome, William, [446], [447]
Brontë, Emily, [735-738].
Brown, Thomas Edward, [790-793].
Browne, William, of Tavistock, [240-246].
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, [678-687].
Browning, Robert, [715-730].
Buckinghamshire, Duke of, [417], [418].
Bunyan, John, [366].
Burns, Robert, [493-506].
Byron, Lord, [597-601].
Callanan, Jeremiah Joseph, [638].
Campbell, Thomas, [580], [581].
Campion, Thomas, [168-176].
Carew, Thomas, [289-295].
Carey, Henry, [444], [445].
Carman, Bliss, [857].
Cartwright, William, [330-333].
Chapman, George, [107].
Chatterton, Thomas, [479].
Chaucer, Geoffrey, [10-12].
Clare, John, [621].
Clough, Arthur Hugh, [741].
Coleridge, Hartley, [643-646].
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, [549-555].
Coleridge, Sara, [661], [662].
Collins, William, [457-460].
Congreve, William, [431], [432].
Constable, Henry, [110].
Cory, William (Johnson), [758-9].
Cotton, Charles, [396].
Cowley, Abraham, [349-353].
Cowper, William, [470], [471].
Crabbe, George, [480-482].
Crashaw, Richard, [336-342].
Cunningham, Allan, [589-591].
Cunninghame-Graham, Robert, of Gartmore, [469].
Cust, Henry, [876].
Cutts, Lord, [421].
Daniel, Samuel, [111-113].
Darley, George, [640-642].
Davenant, Sir William, [301-303].
Davidson, John, [850], [851].
Davies, Sir John, [181].
Davison, F. or W. (?), [64].
Dekker, Thomas, [204].
De Vere, Aubrey, [732], [733].
De Vere, Sir Aubrey, [602].
Dobell, Sydney, [765-768].
Dobson, Henry Austin, [824-826].
Donne, John, [195-202].
Dorset, Earl of, [408].
Drayton, Michael, [116-120].
Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, [224-232].
Dryden, John, [398-402].
Dufferin, Lady, [691].
Dunbar, William, [18-21].
D’Urfey, Thomas, [395].
Edwardes, Richard, [46].
Elliott, Ebenezer, [587], [588].
Elliot, Jane, [466].
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, [669-672].
Etherege, Sir George, [404], [405].
Fanshawe, Sir Richard, [329].
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, [712-714].
FitzGerald, Edward, [697], [698].
Flatman, Thomas, [407].
Fletcher, Giles, [233].
Fletcher, John, [141-143] (?), [207-217].
Fletcher, Phineas, [222].
Ford, John, [235].
Fox, George, [734].
Gascoigne, George, [47].
Gay, John, [439].
Goldsmith, Oliver, [467], [468].
Gosse, Edmund, [845].
Gray, Thomas, [453-456].
Greene, Robert, [103-105].
Greville, Fanny, [475].
Griffin, Gerald, [663].
Grimald, Nicholas, [42].
Habington, William, [297], [298].
Harte, Bret, [813].
Hawes, Stephen, [32], [33].
Hawker, Robert Stephen, [674], [675].
Hemans, Felicia Dorothea, [622].
Henley, William Ernest, [842-844].
Henryson, Robert, [16], [17].
Herbert, George, [281-286].
Herrick, Robert, [247-275].
Heywood, John (?), [53].
Heywood, Thomas, [205], [206].
Hinkson, Katharine Tynan, [877].
Hoccleve, Thomas, [13].
Hood, Thomas, [647-654].
Hogg, James, [513], [514].
Horne, Richard Henry, [673].
Houghton, Lord, [710].
Howells, William Dean, [82].
Hume, Alexander, [106].
Hunt, Leigh, [592].
Hyde, Douglas, [858].
Jago, Richard, [452].
James I (King of Scotland), [15].
Johnson, Samuel, [450], [451].
Jones, Ebenezer, [745].
Jones, Sir William, [478].
Jonson, Ben, [184-194].
Jordan, Thomas, [335].
Keats, John, [623-637].
Keble, John, [620].
Kendall, Henry Clarence, [827].
King, Henry (Bishop of Chichester), [278-280].
Kingsley, Charles, [739], [740].
Kipling, Rudyard, [865-867].
Lamb, Charles, [577-579].
Lamb, Mary, [511].
Landor, Walter Savage, [557-576].
Lang, Andrew, [841].
Le Gallienne, Richard, [868], [869].
Lindsay, Lady Anne, [477].
Locker-Lampson, Frederick, [746].
Lodge, Thomas, [97-100].
Logan, John, [476].
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, [689].
Lovelace, Richard, [343-348].
Lydgate, John, [14].
Lyly, John, [85], [86].
Lyttelton, Lord, [449].
Lytton, Earl of, [794], [795].
Macaulay, Lord, [657].
MacDonald, George, [770].
Mahony, Francis, [677].
Mangan, James Clarence, [664], [665].
Mannyng, Robert, of Brunne, [8].
Marlowe, Christopher, [121].
Marvell, Andrew, [355-361].
Mayne, Jasper, [296].
Melcombe, Lord, [443].
Meredith, George, [772-776].
Meynell, Alice, [879], [880].
Milton, John, [307-324].
Montgomerie, Alexander, [48].
Montrose, Marquis of, [334].
Moore, Thomas, [582-585].
Moore, T. Sturge, [874].
Morris, William, [800-802].
Munday, Anthony, [87].
Nairne, Carolina Lady, [512].
Nashe, Thomas, [166], [167].
Newbolt, Henry, [860].
Noel, Roden Berkeley Wriothesley, [803], [804].
Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah, [692].
Oldham, John, [420].
Oldys, William, [438].
O’Reilly, John Boyle, [831].
O’Shaughnessy, Arthur William Edgar, [828-830].
Otway, Thomas, [419].
Pagan, Isobel, [473].
Parker, Gilbert, [861].
Parnell, Thomas, [436].
Patmore, Coventry, [760-764].
Peacock, Thomas Love, [593-595].
Peele, George, [101], [102].
Philips, Katherine (‘Orinda’), [397].
Philpot, William, [757].
Poe, Edgar Allan, [694-696].
Pope, Alexander, [440-442].
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, [660].
Prior, Matthew, [422-428].
Quarles, Francis, [276], [277].
Raleigh, Sir Walter, [75-78], [122].
Ramsay, Allan, [437].
Randolph, Thomas, [299], [300].
Rands, William Brighty, [755], [756].
Reynolds, John, [177].
Rochester, Earl of, [413-416].
Rolleston, T. W., [849].
Rossetti, Christina Georgina, [779-789].
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, [771]
Rowe, Henry, [507], [508].
Rowlands, Richard, [165].
Ruskin, John, [744].
Russell, George William, [872], [873].
Scott, Alexander, [43], [44].
Scott, Sir Walter, [542-548].
Scott, William Bell, [731].
Sedley, Sir Charles, [409], [410].
Shakespeare, William, 56 (?), [123-164].
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, [605-618].
Shirley, James, [287], [288].
Sidney, Sir Philip, [88-95].
Sigerson, Dora, [881].
Skelton, John, [30], [31].
Smart, Christopher, [465].
Smith, Alexander, [777], [778].
Smollett, Tobias George, [464].
Southey, Caroline, [596].
Southey, Robert, [556].
Southwell, Robert, [108], [109].
Spenser, Edmund, [79-84].
Stanley, Thomas, [394].
Stevenson, Robert Louis, [846-848].
Stevenson, William, [49].
Stirling, Earl of, [221].
Strode, William, [393].
Suckling, Sir John, [325-328].
Surrey, Earl of, [39-41].
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, [808-811].
Sylvester, Joshua, [115].
Taylor, Sir Henry, [656].
Tennyson, Frederick, [688].
Tennyson, Lord, [699-709].
Thom, William, [655].
Thompson, Francis, [875].
Thomson, James, [448].
Thomson, James, [796-799].
Thurlow, Lord, [586].
Todhunter, John, [814], [815].
Traherne, Thomas, [406].
Turner, Charles Tennyson, [693].
Vaughan, Henry, [362-365].
Wade, Thomas, [676].
Walker, William Sidney, [639].
Waller, Edmund, [304-306].
Walsh, William, [429].
Watson, William, [852-854].
Watts, Isaac, [434], [435].
Watts-Dunton, Theodore, [807].
Webbe, Charles, [403].
Webster, John, [218-220].
Wever, Robert, [45].
Whitman, Walt, [742], [743].
Whittier, John Greenleaf, [690].
Wither, George, [236-239].
Wolfe, Charles, [603], [604].
Woods, Margaret L., [882].
Wordsworth, William, [515-541].
Wotton, Sir Henry, [178-180].
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, [34-38].
Yeats, William Butler, [862-864].
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
| No. | |
| A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, | [698] |
| A child’s a plaything for an hour, | [511] |
| A! Fredome is a noble thing!, | [9] |
| A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!, | [793] |
| A late lark twitters from the quiet skies, | [843] |
| A plenteous place is Ireland for hospitable cheer, | [714] |
| A rose, as fair as ever saw the North, | [242] |
| A slumber did my spirit seal, | [519] |
| A star is gone! a star is gone!, | [642] |
| A sunny shaft did I behold, | [555] |
| A sweet disorder in the dress, | [258] |
| A thousand martyrs I have made, | [412] |
| A weary lot is thine, fair maid, | [546] |
| Above yon sombre swell of land, | [673] |
| Absence, hear thou my protestation, | [197] |
| Absent from thee, I languish still, | [413] |
| Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint, | [280] |
| Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss!, | [167] |
| Ae fond kiss, and then we sever, | [499] |
| Ah, Chloris! that I now could sit, | [406] |
| Ah, how sweet it is to love!, | [400] |
| Ah! were she pitiful as she is fair, | [104] |
| Ah, what avails the sceptred race, | [558] |
| Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon, | [739] |
| Alexis, here she stay’d; among these pines, | [228] |
| All are not taken; there are left behind, | [680] |
| All holy influences dwell within, | [602] |
| All in the April morning, | [877] |
| All is best, though we oft doubt, | [324] |
| All my past life is mine no more, | [414] |
| All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair, | [554] |
| All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter, | [726] |
| All the flowers of the spring, | [220] |
| All the words that I utter, | [862] |
| All thoughts, all passions, all delights, | [551] |
| All under the leaves and the leaves of life, | [382] |
| Allas! my worthy maister honorable, | [13] |
| Amarantha sweet and fair, | [346] |
| An ancient chestnut’s blossoms threw, | [572] |
| And, like a dying lady lean and pale, | [609] |
| And wilt thou leave me thus?, | [35] |
| Angel, king of streaming morn, | [507] |
| Angel spirits of sleep, | [833] |
| April, April, | [852] |
| Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?, | [204] |
| As doctors give physic by way of prevention, | [428] |
| As I in hoary winter’s night, | [109] |
| As I was walking all alane, | [380] |
| As it fell upon a day, | [203] |
| As one that for a weary space has lain, | [841] |
| As those we love decay, we die in part, | [448] |
| As we rush, as we rush in the Train, | [796] |
| As ye came from the holy land, | [26] |
| Ask me no more where Jove bestows, | [289] |
| Ask me why I send you here, | [254] |
| Ask not the cause why sullen Spring, | [402] |
| At her fair hands how have I grace entreated, | [64] |
| At the last, tenderly, | [742] |
| At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly, | [585] |
| Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, | [455] |
| Away! Away!, | [462] |
| Away, delights! go seek some other dwelling, | [211] |
| Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon, | [617] |
| Bacchus must now his power resign, | [445] |
| Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep!, | [28] |
| Bards of Passion and of Mirth, | [630] |
| Be it right or wrong, these men among, | [25] |
| Beating Heart! we come again, | [746] |
| Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, | [834] |
| Beauty clear and fair, | [215] |
| Beauty sat bathing by a spring, | [87] |
| Behold her, single in the field, | [528] |
| Being your slave, what should I do but tend, | [151] |
| Best and brightest, come away, | [606] |
| Bid me to live, and I will live, | [266] |
| Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav’ns joy, | [309] |
| Blow, blow, thou winter wind, | [136] |
| Blown in the morning, thou shalt fade ere noon, | [329] |
| Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen, | [514] |
| Brave flowers—that I could gallant it like you, | [278] |
| Breathes there the man with soul so dead, | [547] |
| Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art, | [637] |
| Bring me wine, but wine which never grew, | [671] |
| Busy, curious, thirsty fly!, | [438] |
| By feathers green, across Casbeen, | [859] |
| Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, | [2] |
| Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, 473, | [506] |
| Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, | [218] |
| Calm on the bosom of thy God!, | [622] |
| Calme was the day, and through the trembling ayre, | [81] |
| Came, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet, | [805] |
| Charm me asleep, and melt me so, | [263] |
| Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, | [256] |
| Chloe’s a Nymph in flowery groves, | [395] |
| Christmas knows a merry, merry place, | [807] |
| Clerk Saunders and may Margaret, | [371] |
| Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, | [736] |
| Come away, come away, death, | [134] |
| Come, dear children, let us away, | [747] |
| Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height, | [706] |
| Come into the garden, Maud, | [708] |
| Come, let us now resolve at last, | [417] |
| Come little babe, come silly soul, | [74] |
| Come live with me and be my Love, | [121] |
| Come not in terrors clad, to claim, | [596] |
| Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving, | [207] |
| Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace, | [94] |
| Come, spur away, | [300] |
| Come then, as ever, like the wind at morning!, | [870] |
| Come thou, who art the wine and wit, | [274] |
| Come unto these yellow sands, | [129] |
| Come, worthy Greek! Ulysses, come, | [112] |
| Condemn’d to Hope’s delusive mine, | [451] |
| Corydon, arise, my Corydon!, | [57] |
| Count each affliction, whether light or grave, | [733] |
| Crabbèd Age and Youth, | [56] |
| Cupid and my Campaspe play’d, | [85] |
| Cynthia, to thy power and thee, | [208] |
| Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench, | [320] |
| Dark, deep, and cold the current flows, | [588] |
| Dark to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens, | [817] |
| Daughter to that good Earl, once President, | [317* ] |
| Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark, | [587] |
| Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love, | [223] |
| Dear love, for nothing less than thee, | [199] |
| Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee, | [202] |
| Deep on the convent-roof the snows, | [703] |
| ‘Do you remember me? or are you proud?’, | [569] |
| Does the road wind uphill all the way?, | [783] |
| Drink to me only with thine eyes, | [185] |
| Drop, drop, slow tears, | [222] |
| Earth has not anything to show more fair, | [520] |
| E’en like two little bank-dividing brooks, | [276] |
| Enough; and leave the rest to Fame!, | [361] |
| Even such is Time, that takes in trust, | [78] |
| Ever let the Fancy roam, | [631] |
| Fain would I change that note, | [68] |
| Fair Amoret is gone astray, | [432] |
| Fair and fair, and twice so fair, | [101] |
| Fair daffodils, we weep to see, | [252] |
| Fair is my Love and cruel as she’s fair, | [113] |
| Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, | [253] |
| Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, | [707] |
| Fair stood the wind for France, | [119] |
| False though she be to me and love, | [431] |
| False world, good night! since thou hast brough, | [190] |
| Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, | [153] |
| Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, | [140] |
| Fine knacks for ladies! cheap, choice, brave, and new, | [58] |
| First came the primrose, | [767] |
| Flowers nodding gaily, scent in air, | [874] |
| Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race, | [308] |
| Fly hence, shadows, that do keep, | [235] |
| Follow a shadow, it still flies you, | [187] |
| Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!, | [170] |
| Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet!, | [171] |
| Foolish prater, what dost thou, | [351] |
| For a name unknown, | [857] |
| For her gait, if she be walking, | [243] |
| For knighthood is not in the feats of warre, | [32] |
| Forbear, bold youth; all’s heaven here, | [397] |
| Forget not yet the tried intent, | [34] |
| Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin, | [114] |
| Fresh Spring, the herald of loves mighty king, | [79] |
| From harmony, from heavenly harmony, | [399] |
| From low to high doth dissolution climb, | [539] |
| From the forests and highlands, | [605] |
| From you have I been absent in the spring, | [157] |
| From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass, | [559] |
| Full fathom five thy father lies, | [131] |
| Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, | [248] |
| Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn, | [247] |
| Give a man a horse he can ride, | [798] |
| Give all to love, | [669] |
| Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, | [77] |
| Give pardon, blessèd soul, to my bold cries, | [110] |
| Give place, you ladies, and begone!, | [53] |
| Go and catch a falling star, | [196] |
| Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine, | [496] |
| Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill, | [751] |
| Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand, | [684] |
| Go, lovely Rose, | [305] |
| God Lyæus, ever young, | [214] |
| God of our fathers, known of old, | [867] |
| God who created me, | [855] |
| Gone were but the winter cold, | [591] |
| Good-morrow to the day so fair, | [268] |
| Great men have been among us; hands that penn’d, | [525] |
| Had we but world enough, and time, | [357] |
| Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!, | [476] |
| Hail holy light, ofspring of Heav’n first-born, | [322] |
| Hail, sister springs, | [337] |
| Hail to thee, blithe spirit!, | [608] |
| Hallow the threshold, crown the posts anew!, | [332] |
| Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be, | [590] |
| Happy those early days, when I, | [362] |
| Hark! ah, the Nightingale, | [752] |
| Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, | [139] |
| Hark! Now everything is still, | [219] |
| Hark! the mavis’ evening sang, | [506] |
| He first deceased; she for a little tried, | [180] |
| He has conn’d the lesson now, | [660] |
| He that is by Mooni now, | [827] |
| He that is down needs fear no fall, | [366] |
| He that loves a rosy cheek, | [292] |
| He who has once been happy is for aye, | [818] |
| Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes, | [715] |
| Hear the voice of the Bard, | [488] |
| Hear, ye ladies that despise, | [213] |
| Helen, thy beauty is to me, | [694] |
| Hence, all you vain delights, | [216] |
| Hence, heart, with her that must depart, | [43] |
| Hence loathed Melancholy, | [310] |
| Hence vain deluding joyes, | [311] |
| Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, | [262] |
| Here a little child I stand, | [271] |
| Here a pretty baby lies, | [273] |
| Here, ever since you went abroad, | [567] |
| Here in this sequester’d close, | [824] |
| Here she lies, a pretty bud, | [272] |
| Hey nonny no!, | [59] |
| Hey! now the day dawis, | [48] |
| Hierusalem, my happy home, | [61] |
| High-spirited friend, | [191] |
| Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, | [92] |
| His golden locks Time hath to silver turn’d, | [102] |
| How happy is he born and taught, | [179] |
| How like a Winter hath my absence been, | [156] |
| How many times do I love thee, dear?, | [668] |
| How near me came the hand of Death, | [239] |
| How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, | [458] |
| How vainly men themselves amaze, | [359] |
| Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber, | [435] |
| Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere, | [11] |
| I am that which began, | [809] |
| I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?, | [621] |
| I arise from dreams of thee, | [611] |
| I ask no kind return of love, | [475] |
| I came into the City and none knew me, | [878] |
| I cannot change as others do, | [415] |
| I cannot eat but little meat, | [49] |
| I dare not ask a kiss, | [250] |
| I did but look and love awhile, | [419] |
| I did not choose thee, dearest. It was Love, | [819] |
| I do confess thou’rt smooth and fair, | [182] |
| I do not love thee!—no! I do not love thee!, | [692] |
| I dream’d that, as I wander’d by the way, | [616] |
| I dug, beneath the cypress shade, | [594] |
| I feed a flame within, which so torments me, | [401] |
| I flung me round him, | [803] |
| I got me flowers to straw Thy way, | [282] |
| I have a mistress, for perfections rare, | [299] |
| I have had playmates, I have had companions, | [577] |
| I intended an Ode, | [825] |
| I know a little garden-close, | [802] |
| I know a thing that’s most uncommon, | [440] |
| I know my soul hath power to know all things, | [181] |
| I left thee last, a child at heart, | [678] |
| I long have had a quarrel set with Time, | [823] |
| I loved a lass, a fair one, | [236] |
| I loved him not; and yet now he is gone, | [557] |
| I loved thee once; I’ll love no more, | [183] |
| I made another garden, yea, | [829] |
| I mind me in the days departed, | [679] |
| I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, | [879] |
| I, my dear, was born to-day, | [425] |
| I play’d with you ’mid cowslips blowing, | [593] |
| I pray thee, leave, love me no more, | [116] |
| I said—Then, dearest, since ’tis so, | [727] |
| I saw fair Chloris walk alone, | [393] |
| I saw my Lady weep, | [66] |
| I saw old Autumn in the misty morn, | [647] |
| I saw where in the shroud did lurk, | [579] |
| I sent a ring—a little band, | [641] |
| I sing of a maiden, | [23] |
| I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, | [576] |
| I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless, | [681] |
| I that in heill was and gladnèss, | [21] |
| I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide, | [538] |
| I thought once how Theocritus had sung, | [682] |
| I thought to meet no more, so dreary seem’d, | [620] |
| I took my heart in my hand, | [782] |
| I travell’d among unknown men, | [517] |
| I wander’d lonely as a cloud, | [530] |
| I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, | [864] |
| I will make you brooches and toys for your delight, | [846] |
| I wish I were where Helen lies, | [387] |
| I, with whose colours Myra dress’d her head, | [96] |
| Ichot a burde in boure bryht, | [4] |
| I’d a dream to-night, | [658] |
| I’d wed you without herds, without money or rich array, | [713] |
| I’m sittin’ on the stile, Mary, | [691 ] |
| I’m wearin’ awa’, John, | [512] |
| I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking, | [466] |
| If all the world and love were young, | [122] |
| If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, | [459] |
| If doughty deeds my lady please, | [469] |
| If I had thought thou couldst have died, | [604] |
| ‘If I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’, | [761] |
| If rightly tuneful bards decide, | [461] |
| If the quick spirits in your eye, | [290] |
| If the red slayer think he slays, | [672] |
| If there were dreams to sell, | [667] |
| If thou must love me, let it be for naught, | [685] |
| If thou wilt ease thine heart, | [666] |
| If to be absent were to be, | [344] |
| If you go over desert and mountain, | [830] |
| In a drear-nighted December, | [632] |
| In a harbour grene aslepe whereas I lay, | [45] |
| In a quiet water’d land, a land of roses, | [849] |
| In a valley of this restles mind, | [24] |
| In after days when grasses high, | [826] |
| In Clementina’s artless mien, | [568] |
| In going to my naked bed as one that would have slept, | [46] |
| In Scarlet town, where I was born, | [389] |
| In somer when the shawes be sheyne, | [22] |
| In the hall the coffin waits, and the idle armourer stands, | [768] |
| In the highlands, in the country places, | [847] |
| In the hour of death, after this life’s whim, | [883] |
| In the hour of my distress, | [275] |
| In the merry month of May, | [73] |
| In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, | [550] |
| Into the silver night, | [845] |
| Into the skies, one summer’s day, | [756] |
| Is it so small a thing, | [754] |
| It fell about the Martinmas, | [374] |
| It fell in the ancient periods, | [670] |
| It fell on a day, and a bonnie simmer day, | [377] |
| It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, | [521] |
| It is an ancient Mariner, | [549] |
| It is not, Celia, in our power, | [405] |
| It is not death, that sometime in a sigh, | [649] |
| It is not growing like a tree, | [194] |
| It is not to be thought of that the flood, | [526] |
| It is the miller’s daughter, | [701] |
| It was a dismal and a fearful night, | [352 ] |
| It was a lover and his lass, | [137] |
| It was a’ for our rightfu’ King, | [505] |
| It was many and many a year ago, | [695] |
| It was not in the Winter, | [651] |
| It was not like your great and gracious ways!, | [762] |
| It was the Winter wilde, | [307] |
| Its edges foam’d with amethyst and rose, | [873] |
| Jenny kiss’d me when we met, | [592] |
| John Anderson, my jo, John, | [497] |
| Know, Celia, since thou art so proud, | [293] |
| Ladies, though to your conquering eyes, | [404] |
| Late at een, drinkin’ the wine, | [370] |
| Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son, | [319] |
| Lay a garland on my herse, | [209] |
| Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, | [95] |
| Lenten ys come with love to toune, | [3] |
| Lestenyt, lordynges, both elde and yinge, | [7] |
| Let me go forth, and share, | [853] |
| Let me not to the marriage of true minds, | [162] |
| Let the bird of loudest lay, | [144] |
| Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice, | [335] |
| Life! I know not what thou art, | [474] |
| Like the Idalian queen, | [225] |
| Like thee I once have stemm’d the sea of life, | [472] |
| Like to Diana in her summer weed, | [103] |
| Like to the clear in highest sphere, | [100] |
| Lo, quhat it is to love, | [44] |
| London, thou art of townes A per se, | [19] |
| Long-expected One-and-twenty, | [450] |
| Look not thou on beauty’s charming, | [544] |
| Lords, knights, and squires, the numerous band, | [423] |
| Loud mockers in the roaring street, | [869] |
| Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, | [286] |
| Love guards the roses of thy lips, | [99] |
| Love in fantastic triumph sate, | [411] |
| Love in my bosom like a bee, | [97] |
| Love is a sickness full of woes, | [111] |
| Love is enough: though the World be a-waning, | [801] |
| Love is the blossom where there blows, | [233] |
| Love not me for comely grace, | [71 ] |
| Love, thou art absolute, sole Lord, | [338] |
| Love thy country, wish it well, | [443] |
| Love wing’d my Hopes and taught me how to fly, | [62] |
| Marie Hamilton’s to the kirk gane, | [375] |
| Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like, | [775] |
| Martial, the things that do attain, | [41] |
| Marvel of marvels, if I myself shall behold, | [785] |
| Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, | [470] |
| May! Be thou never graced with birds that sing, | [245] |
| May! queen of blossoms, | [586] |
| Me so oft my fancy drew, | [238] |
| Men grew sae cauld, maids sae unkind, | [655] |
| Merry Margaret, | [31] |
| Methought I saw my late espousèd Saint, | [321] |
| Mild is the parting year, and sweet, | [565] |
| Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour, | [524] |
| More love or more disdain I crave, | [403] |
| Mortality, behold and fear!, | [234] |
| Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day, | [84] |
| Mother, I cannot mind my wheel, | [564] |
| Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!, | [629] |
| Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, | [634] |
| Music, when soft voices die, | [618] |
| My blood so red, | [385] |
| My Damon was the first to wake, | [480] |
| My days among the Dead are past, | [556] |
| My dear and only Love, I pray, | [334] |
| My delight and thy delight, | [832] |
| My faint spirit was sitting in the light, | [613] |
| My grief on the sea, | [858] |
| My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains, | [624] |
| My heart is high above, my body is full of bliss, | [52] |
| My heart is like a singing bird, | [780] |
| My heart leaps up when I behold, | [532] |
| My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes, | [763] |
| My Love in her attire doth show her wit, | [63] |
| My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming, | [158] |
| My love o’er the water bends dreaming, | [797] |
| My lute, awake! perform the last, | [38] |
| My mother bore me in the southern wild, | [487] |
| My new-cut ashlar takes the light, | [865] |
| My noble, lovely, little Peggy, | [427] |
| My Peggy is a young thing, | [437 ] |
| My Phillis hath the morning sun, | [98] |
| My silks and fine array, | [485] |
| My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on, | [277] |
| My soul, there is a country, | [363] |
| My thoughts hold mortal strife, | [230] |
| My true love hath my heart, and I have his, | [88] |
| Nay but you, who do not love her, | [721] |
| Near to the silver Trent, | [118] |
| Never seek to tell thy love, | [492] |
| Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore, | [176] |
| New doth the sun appear, | [231] |
| News from a foreign country came, | [406] |
| No coward soul is mine, | [738] |
| No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist, | [628] |
| No thyng ys to man so dere, | [8] |
| Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away, | [730] |
| Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, | [603] |
| Not, Celia, that I juster am, | [410] |
| ‘Not ours,’ say some, ‘the thought of death to dread, | [854] |
| Not unto us, O Lord, | [876] |
| Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white, | [705] |
| Now the lusty spring is seen, | [212] |
| Now the North wind ceases, | [774] |
| Now winter nights enlarge, | [174] |
| Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room, | [533] |
| O, Brignall banks are wild and fair, | [543] |
| O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, | [743] |
| O Christ of God! whose life and death, | [690] |
| O come, soft rest of cares! come, Night!, | [107] |
| O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes, | [789] |
| O fly, my Soul! What hangs upon, | [287] |
| O fly not, Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure, | [816] |
| O for some honest lover’s ghost, | [325] |
| O for the mighty wakening that aroused, | [676] |
| O friend! I know not which way I must look, | [523] |
| O goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung, | [626] |
| O happy dames! that may embrace, | [40] |
| O happy Tithon! if thou know’st thy hap, | [221] |
| O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, | [150] |
| O, I hae come from far away, | [731] |
| O joy of creation, | [813 ] |
| O lusty May, with Flora queen!, | [51] |
| O many a day have I made good ale in the glen, | [638] |
| O Mary, at thy window be, | [493] |
| O Mary, go and call the cattle home, | [740] |
| O Memory, thou fond deceiver, | [468] |
| O mistress mine, where are you roaming?, | [133] |
| O mortal folk, you may behold and see, | [33] |
| O my Dark Rosaleen, | [664] |
| O my deir hert, young Jesus sweit, | [384] |
| O my Luve’s like a red, red rose, | [503] |
| O never say that I was false of heart, | [161] |
| O perfect Light, which shaid away, | [106] |
| O ruddier than the cherry!, | [439] |
| O saw ye bonnie Lesley, | [500] |
| O saw ye not fair Ines?, | [650] |
| O sing unto my roundelay, | [479] |
| O sleep, my babe, hear not the rippling wave, | [661] |
| O soft embalmer of the still midnight!, | [636] |
| O Sorrow!, | [623] |
| O that ’twere possible, | [709] |
| O the sad day!, | [407] |
| O thou, by Nature taught, | [457] |
| O thou that swing’st upon the waving hair, | [347] |
| O thou undaunted daughter of desires!, | [339] |
| O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down, | [484] |
| O Time! who know’st a lenient hand to lay, | [509] |
| O, to be in England, | [729] |
| O turn away those cruel eyes, | [394] |
| O waly, waly, up the bank, | [388] |
| O were my Love yon lilac fair, | [502] |
| O western wind, when wilt thou blow, | [27] |
| O wha will shoe my bonny foot?, | [369] |
| O what a plague is love!, | [392] |
| O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, | [633] |
| ‘O which is the last rose?’, | [851] |
| O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, | [610] |
| O world, be nobler, for her sake!, | [871] |
| O world, in very truth thou art too young, | [822] |
| O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, | [10] |
| O, you plant the pain in my heart with your wistful eyes, | [814] |
| Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw, | [494] |
| Of all the flowers rising now, | [757] |
| Of all the girls that are so smart, | [444] |
| Of all the torments, all the cares, | [429 ] |
| Of Nelson and the North, | [581] |
| Of Neptune’s empire let us sing, | [173] |
| Of on that is so fayr and bright, | [6] |
| Oft, in the stilly night, | [584] |
| Often I think of the beautiful town, | [689] |
| Oh how comely it is and how reviving, | [323] |
| On a day—alack the day!, | [124] |
| On a starr’d night Prince Lucifer uprose, | [776] |
| On a time the amorous Silvy, | [72] |
| On either side the river lie, | [700] |
| On parent knees, a naked new-born child, | [478] |
| On the deck of Patrick Lynch’s boat I sat in woful plight, | [734] |
| On the Sabbath-day, | [778] |
| On the wide level of a mountain’s head, | [553] |
| Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, | [522] |
| One more Unfortunate, | [654] |
| One word is too often profaned, | [615] |
| Only tell her that I love, | [421] |
| O’re the smooth enameld green, | [312] |
| Orpheus with his lute made trees, | [143] |
| Others abide our question. Thou art free, | [753] |
| Out of the night that covers me, | [842] |
| Out upon it, I have loved, | [326] |
| Over hill, over dale, | [127] |
| Over the mountains, | [391] |
| Over the sea our galleys went, | [716] |
| Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day!, | [205] |
| Passing away, saith the World, passing away, | [784] |
| Passions are liken’d best to floods and streams, | [75] |
| Past ruin’d Ilion Helen lives, | [561] |
| Peace, Shepherd, peace! What boots it singing on?, | [882] |
| Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, | [837] |
| Phœbus, arise!, | [224] |
| Piping down the valleys wild, | [486] |
| Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, | [164] |
| Praise is devotion fit for mighty minds, | [303] |
| Pray but one prayer for me ’twixt thy closed lips, | [800] |
| Proud Maisie is in the wood, | [542] |
| Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak, | [562] |
| Pure stream, in whose transparent wave, | [464] |
| Put your head, darling, darling, darling, | [712] |
| Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, | [184 ] |
| Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose, | [449] |
| Quhen Flora had o’erfret the firth, | [50] |
| Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife, | [656] |
| Remain, ah not in youth alone!, | [566] |
| Remember me when I am gone away, | [787] |
| Return, return! all night my lamp is burning, | [766] |
| ‘Rise,’ said the Master, ‘come unto the feast’, | [711] |
| Robin sat on gude green hill, | [16] |
| Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river, | [665] |
| Rorate coeli desuper!, | [20] |
| Rose-cheek’d Laura, come, | [169] |
| Roses, their sharp spines being gone, | [141] |
| Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, | [725] |
| Sabrina fair, | [315] |
| Safe where I cannot die yet, | [786] |
| Say, crimson Rose and dainty Daffodil, | [177] |
| Say not the struggle naught availeth, | [741] |
| Says Tweed to Till, | [383] |
| Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown’d, | [534] |
| Seamen three! What men be ye?, | [595] |
| Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!, | [627] |
| See how the flowers, as at parade, | [356] |
| See the Chariot at hand here of Love, | [188] |
| See where she sits upon the grassie greene, | [80] |
| See with what simplicity, | [358] |
| See yon blithe child that dances in our sight!, | [662] |
| Sense with keenest edge unusèd, | [838] |
| Seven weeks of sea, and twice seven days of storm, | [821] |
| Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?, | [145] |
| Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, | [810] |
| Shall I thus ever long, and be no whit the neare?, | [54] |
| Shall I, wasting in despair, | [237] |
| She beat the happy pavèment, | [345] |
| She dwelt among the untrodden ways, | [516] |
| She fell away in her first ages spring, | [83] |
| She is not fair to outward view, | [644] |
| She knelt upon her brother’s grave, | [790] |
| She pass’d away like morning dew, | [645] |
| She stood breast-high amid the corn, | [652] |
| She walks in beauty, like the night, | [600] |
| She walks—the lady of my delight, | [880 ] |
| She was a phantom of delight, | [529] |
| She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning, | [643] |
| She who to Heaven more Heaven doth annex, | [333] |
| She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong, | [868] |
| Should auld acquaintance be forgot, | [495] |
| Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night, | [261] |
| Since all that I can ever do for thee, | [795] |
| Since first I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye, | [69] |
| Since I noo mwore do zee your feäce, | [659] |
| Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part, | [117] |
| Sing his praises that doth keep, | [210] |
| Sing lullaby, as women do, | [47] |
| Sister, awake! close not your eyes!, | [67] |
| Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, | [490] |
| So shuts the marigold her leaves, | [244] |
| So, we’ll go no more a-roving, | [599] |
| Softly, O midnight Hours!, | [732] |
| Some vex their souls with jealous pain, | [418] |
| Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, | [545] |
| Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king, | [166] |
| Stand close around, ye Stygian set, | [571] |
| Stay, O sweet, and do not rise!, | [195] |
| Steer, hither steer your wingèd pines, | [241] |
| Stern Daughter of the voice of God!, | [531] |
| Still do the stars impart their light, | [331] |
| Still let my tyrants know, I am not doom’d to wear, | [737] |
| Still to be neat, still to be drest, | [186] |
| Strange fits of passion have I known, | [515] |
| Strew on her roses, roses, | [750] |
| Sublime—invention ever young, | [465] |
| Sumer is icumen in, | [1] |
| Summer set lip to earth’s bosom bare, | [875] |
| Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs, | [364] |
| Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind, | [537] |
| Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, | [811] |
| Sweet are the rosy memories of the lips, | [794] |
| Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes, | [264] |
| Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, | [281] |
| Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv’st unseen, | [314] |
| Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, | [640] |
| Sweet rois of vertew and of gentilness, | [18] |
| Sweet Spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train, | [227] |
| Sweet western wind, whose luck it is, | [249] |
| Sweetest Saviour, if my soul, | [284 ] |
| Swiftly walk over the western wave, | [612] |
| Take, O take those lips away, | [138] |
| Tary no longer; toward thyn heritage, | [14] |
| Tell me not of a face that’s fair, | [354] |
| Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, | [343] |
| Tell me not what too well I know, | [570] |
| Tell me where is Fancy bred, | [132] |
| Th’ expense of Spirit in a waste of shame, | [163] |
| Thank Heaven! the crisis, | [696] |
| That time of year thou may’st in me behold, | [152] |
| That which her slender waist confined, | [304] |
| That zephyr every year, | [226] |
| The beauty and the life, | [229] |
| The blessèd Damozel lean’d out, | [771] |
| The boat is chafing at our long delay, | [850] |
| The chough and crow to roost are gone, | [510] |
| The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, | [453] |
| The day begins to droop, | [839] |
| The days are sad, it is the Holy tide, | [688] |
| The fierce exulting worlds, the motes in rays, | [777] |
| The forward youth that would appear, | [355] |
| The glories of our blood and state, | [288] |
| The gray sea and the long black land, | [724] |
| The Indian weed witherèd quite, | [390] |
| The irresponsive silence of the land, | [788] |
| The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!, | [601] |
| The king sits in Dunfermline town, | [368] |
| The Lady Mary Villiers lies, | [294] |
| The lark now leaves his wat’ry nest, | [301] |
| The last and greatest Herald of Heaven’s King, | [232] |
| The leaves are falling; so am I, | [575] |
| The linnet in the rocky dells, | [735] |
| The loppèd tree in time may grow again, | [108] |
| The lovely lass o’ Inverness, | [504] |
| The man of life upright, | [175] |
| The merchant, to secure his treasure, | [424] |
| The moth’s kiss, first!, | [723] |
| The murmur of the mourning ghost, | [765] |
| The Nightingale, as soon as April bringeth, | [91] |
| The rain set early in to-night, | [720] |
| The red rose whispers of passion, | [831] |
| The reivers they stole Fair Annie, | [372] |
| The ring, so worn as you behold, | [482] |
| The Rose was sick and smiling died, | [255 ] |
| The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er, | [306] |
| The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, | [39] |
| The spacious firmament on high, | [433] |
| The splendour falls on castle walls, | [704] |
| The Star that bids the Shepherd fold, | [313] |
| The sun descending in the west, | [491] |
| The sun rises bright in France, | [589] |
| The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, | [349] |
| The twentieth year is wellnigh past, | [471] |
| The wine of Love is music, | [799] |
| The world is too much with us; late and soon, | [535] |
| The world’s great age begins anew, | [607] |
| The year’s at the spring, | [718] |
| The young May moon is beaming, love, | [582] |
| Thee too, modest tressèd maid, | [508] |
| Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now, | [154] |
| There ance was a may, and she lo’ed na men, | [430] |
| There are two births; the one when light, | [330] |
| There be none of Beauty’s daughters, | [598] |
| There is a garden in her face, | [168] |
| There is a Lady sweet and kind, | [70] |
| There is a mountain and a wood between us, | [574] |
| There is a silence where hath been no sound, | [648] |
| There is sweet music here that softer falls, | [702] |
| There lived a wife at Usher’s well, | [378] |
| There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, | [536] |
| There were three ravens sat on a tree, | [379] |
| There were twa sisters sat in a bour, | [376] |
| There’s a glade in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe, | [815] |
| There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield, | [866] |
| There’s a woman like a dew-drop, she’s so purer than the purest, | [722] |
| There’s not a nook within this silent Pass, | [540] |
| They are all gone into the world of light!, | [365] |
| They are waiting on the shore, | [804] |
| They flee from me that sometime did me seek, | [37] |
| They seem’d, to those who saw them meet, | [710] |
| They that have power to hurt and will do none, | [155] |
| They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, | [759] |
| They all were looking for a king, | [770] |
| This ae nighte, this ae nighte, | [381] |
| This hinder yeir I hard be tald, | [17] |
| This is a spray the Bird clung to, | [728] |
| This little vault, this narrow room, | [295 ] |
| This winter’s weather it waxeth cold, | [29] |
| Thou art to all lost love the best, | [267] |
| Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, | [625] |
| Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, | [398] |
| Though beauty be the mark of praise, | [189] |
| Three years she grew in sun and shower, | [518] |
| Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer’d my way, | [583] |
| Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, | [748] |
| Throw away Thy rod, | [283] |
| Thus the Mayne glideth, | [717] |
| Thus when the silent grave becomes, | [447] |
| Thy bosom is endearèd with all hearts, | [148] |
| Thy restless feet now cannot go, | [341] |
| Thy soul within such silent pomp did keep, | [420] |
| Tiger, tiger, burning bright, | [489] |
| Time is the feather’d thing, | [296] |
| ’Tis a dull sight, | [697] |
| To all you ladies now at land, | [408] |
| To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb, | [460] |
| To live within a cave—it is most good, | [792] |
| To me, fair friend, you never can be old, | [159] |
| To mute and to material things, | [548] |
| To my true king I offer’d free from stain, | [657] |
| To the Ocean now I fly, | [316] |
| To these whom death again did wed, | [342] |
| To-day, all day, I rode upon the down, | [820] |
| To-night retired, the queen of heaven, | [463] |
| Too late for love, too late for joy, | [779] |
| Too solemn for day, too sweet for night, | [639] |
| Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles, | [812] |
| True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank, | [367] |
| Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet?, | [744] |
| ’Twas on a lofty vase’s side, | [456] |
| ’Twas the dream of a God, | [881] |
| Twenty years hence my eyes may grow, | [560] |
| Under the greenwood tree, | [135] |
| Under the wide and starry sky, | [848] |
| Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward, | [772] |
| Underneath this myrtle shade, | [350] |
| Underneath this sable herse, | [246] |
| Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!, | [683] |
| Up the airy mountain, | [769] |
| Upon my lap my sovereign sits, | [165 ] |
| Urns and odours bring away!, | [142] |
| Venus, take my votive glass, | [426] |
| Verse, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying, | [552] |
| Vital spark of heav’nly flame!, | [442] |
| Waes-hael for knight and dame!, | [674] |
| We are the music-makers, | [828] |
| We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest, | [340] |
| We see them not—we cannot hear, | [675] |
| We, that did nothing study but the way, | [279] |
| We watch’d her breathing thro’ the night, | [653] |
| We’ve trod the maze of error round, | [481] |
| Weave the warp, and weave the woof, | [454] |
| Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan, | [217] |
| Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, | [105] |
| Weep with me, all you that read, | [193] |
| Weep you no more, sad fountains, | [65] |
| Welcome, maids of honour!, | [251] |
| Welcome, welcome! do I sing, | [240] |
| Well then! I now do plainly see, | [353] |
| Were I as base as is the lowly plain, | [115] |
| Wharefore sou’d ye talk o’ love, | [619] |
| What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade, | [441] |
| What bird so sings, yet so does wail?, | [86] |
| What conscience, say, is it in thee, | [265] |
| What have I done for you, | [844] |
| What is your substance, whereof are you made, | [149] |
| What needs complaints, | [269] |
| What nymph should I admire or trust, | [422] |
| What should I say?, | [36] |
| What sweet relief the showers to thirsty plants we see, | [42] |
| What was he doing, the great god Pan, | [687] |
| When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, | [773] |
| When, Cœlia, must my old day set, | [396] |
| When daisies pied and violets blue, | [125] |
| When, dearest, I but think of thee, | [328] |
| When Death to either shall come, | [840] |
| When Delia on the plain appears, | [449] |
| When God at first made Man, | [285] |
| When I am dead, my dearest, | [781] |
| When I consider how my light is spent, | [318] |
| When I have borne in memory what has tamed, | [527] |
| When I have fears that I may cease to be, | [635] |
| When I survey the bright, | [298 ] |
| When icicles hang by the wall, | [126] |
| When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, | [146] |
| When in the chronicle of wasted time, | [160] |
| When Jessie comes with her soft breast, | [791] |
| When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year, | [693] |
| When like the early rose, | [663] |
| When Love arose in heart and deed, | [755] |
| When Love with unconfinèd wings, | [348] |
| When lovely woman stoops to folly, | [467] |
| When maidens such as Hester die, | [578] |
| When my love was away, | [836] |
| When our two souls stand up erect and strong, | [686] |
| When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, | [872] |
| When the fierce North-wind with his airy forces, | [434] |
| When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, | [808] |
| When the lamp is shatter’d, | [614] |
| When the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame, | [477] |
| When the world is burning, | [745] |
| When thou must home to shades of underground, | [172] |
| When thou, poor Excommunicate, | [291] |
| When thy beauty appears, | [436] |
| When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought, | [147] |
| When we two parted, | [597] |
| When we were idlers with the loitering rills, | [646] |
| When you and I have play’d the little hour, | [861] |
| When you are old and gray and full of sleep, | [863] |
| Whenas in silks my Julia goes, | [259] |
| Where, like a pillow on a bed, | [198] |
| Where the bee sucks, there suck I, | [130] |
| Where the pools are bright and deep, | [513] |
| Where the remote Bermudas ride, | [360] |
| Whether on Ida’s shady brow, | [483] |
| While that the sun with his beams hot, | [55] |
| Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, | [835] |
| Who hath his fancy pleased, | [89] |
| Who is it that, this dark night, | [90] |
| Who is Silvia? What is she?, | [123] |
| Whoe’er she be, | [336] |
| Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm, | [200] |
| Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant, | [541] |
| Why does your brand sae drop wi’ blude, | [373] |
| Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why, | [416] |
| Why, having won her, do I woo?, | [760] |
| Why I tie about thy wrist, | [260 ] |
| Why so pale and wan, fond lover?, | [327] |
| Why, why repine, my pensive friend, | [563] |
| Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, | [201] |
| With all my will, but much against my heart, | [764] |
| With blackest moss the flower-plots, | [699] |
| With deep affection, | [677] |
| With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies!, | [93] |
| With leaden foot Time creeps along, | [452] |
| With lifted feet, hands still, | [856] |
| With margerain gentle, | [30] |
| Worschippe ye that loveris bene this May, | [15] |
| Wouldst thou hear what Man can say, | [192] |
| Wrong not, sweet empress of my heart, | [76] |
| Wynter wakeneth al my care, | [5] |
| Years, many parti-colour’d years, | [573] |
| Ye banks and braes and streams around, | [501] |
| Ye blushing virgins happy are, | [297] |
| Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon, | [498] |
| Ye have been fresh and green, | [270] |
| ‘Ye have robb’d,’ said he, ‘ye have slaughter’d and made an end, | [860] |
| Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands, | [386] |
| Ye learnèd sisters, which have oftentimes, | [82] |
| Ye little birds that sit and sing, | [206] |
| Ye Mariners of England, | [580] |
| Yes: in the sea of life enisled, | [749] |
| Yet if His Majesty, our sovereign lord, | [60] |
| Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more, | [317] |
| You are a tulip seen to-day, | [257] |
| You brave heroic minds, | [120] |
| You meaner beauties of the night, | [178] |
| You must be sad; for though it is to Heaven, | [806] |
| You promise heavens free from strife, | [758] |
| You spotted snakes with double tongue, | [128] |
| You’ll love me yet!—and I can tarry, | [719] |
| Your beauty, ripe and calm and fresh, | [302] |
| Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, | [12] |
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY