Yonder a workman, under the cool bridge,
Resting at mid-day, watches the glancing midge,
While twinkling lights and murmurs of the stream
Pass into the dim fabric of his dream.
The misty hollows and the drowsy ridge—
How like an airy fantasy they seem.
One Life, One Law
What do we know—what need we know
Of the great world to which we go?
We peer into the tomb, and hark:
Its walls are dim, its doors are dark.
Be still, O mourning heart, nor seek
To make the tongueless silence speak:
Be still, be strong, nor wish to find
Their way who leave the world behind—
Voices and forms forever gone
Into the darkness of the dawn.
What is their wisdom, clear and deep?—
That as men sow they surely reap,—
That every thought, that every deed,
Is sown into the soul for seed.
They have no word we do not know,—
Nor yet the cherubim aglow
With God: we know that virtue saves,—
They know no more beyond the graves.
Griefs
The rains of winter scourged the weald,
For days they darkened on the field:
Now, where the wings of winter beat,
The poppies ripple in the wheat.
And pitiless griefs came thick and fast—
Life’s bough was naked in the blast—
Till silently amid the gloom
They blew the wintry heart to bloom.
An Old Road
A host of poppies, a flight of swallows;
A flurry of rain, and a wind that follows
Shepherds the leaves in the sheltered hollows,
For the forest is shaken and thinned.