Family

Soon as the spring its earliest visit pays,
And buds with March and April's lengthen'd days
Of mingled suns and shades, and snow, and rain,
Forcing the crackling frost to melt again;
Oft sprinkling from their bosoms, as they come,
A dwindling daisy here and there to bloom;
I mark the widow, and her orphan boy,
In preparation for their old employ.
The cloak and hat that had for seasons past
Repell'd the rain and buffeted the blast,
Though worn to shreddings, still are occupied
In make-shift way their nakedness to hide;
For since her husband died her hopes are few,
When time's worn out the old, to purchase new.
Upon the green they're seen by rising sun,
To sharp winds croodling they would vainly shun,
With baskets on their arm and hazel crooks
Dragging the ...

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

Even from that delight memory treasures so,
Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
The bride is catried to the bridegroom’s chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song;
I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Dear little Alice lay dying; -
I see her as if 'twas to-day,
And we stood round her snowy bed, crying,
And watching her life ebb away.

'Twas a beautiful day in the spring,
The sun shone out warmly and clear;
And the wee birds, their love songs to sing
Came and perched on the trees that grew near.

In the distance, the glistening sea,
Could be heard in a deep solemn tone,
As if murmuring in sad sympathy,
For our griefs and our hopes that had flown.

The windows, wide open, allowed
The soft wind to fan her white cheek,
As with uncovered heads, mutely bowed,
We stood watching, not daring to speak.

We were only her playmates, - no tie
Of relationship drew us that way,
We'd been told that dear Alice must die,
And she'd begg'd sh...

Come home, come home! and where is home for me,
Whose ship is driving o’er the trackless sea?
To the frail bark here plunging on its way,
To the wild waters, shall I turn and say
To the plunging bark, or to the salt sea foam,
        You are my home.

Fields once I walked in, faces once I knew,
Familiar things so old my heart believed them true,
These far, far back, behind me lie, before
The dark clouds mutter, and the deep seas roar,
And speak to them that ’neath and o’er them roam
        No words of home.

Beyond the clouds, beyond the waves that roar,
There may indeed, or may not be, a shore,
Where fields as green, and hands and hearts as true,
The old forgotten semblance may renew,
And offer exiles driven far o’er the salt sea foam
        ...

After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines and Newspapers



    Ah, they are passing, passing by,
    Wonderful songs, but born to die!
    Cries from the infinite human seas,
    Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.
    Here I stand on a pier in the foam
    Seeing the songs to the beach go home,
    Dying in sand while the tide flows back,
    As it flowed of old in its fated track.
    Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear
    Your own foam-children dying near:
    Is there no refuge-house of song,
    No home, no haven where songs belong?
    Oh, precious hymns that come and go!
    You perish, and I love you so!

Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees:
The leaves lie thick upon the way
Of memories.

Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart.

The crown of stars is broken in parts,
Its jewels brighter than the day,
Have one by one been stolen away
To shine in other homes and hearts.
--[Hanging of the Crane.]


Each poem is a star that shines
    Within your crown of light;
Each jeweled thought--a fadeless gem
    That dims the stars of night.

A flower here and there, so sweet,
    Its fragrance fills the earth,
Is woven in among the gems
    Of proud, immortal birth.

Each wee Forget-me-not hath eyes
    As blue as yonder skies,
To tell the world each song of thine
    Is one that never dies.

The purple pansies stained with gold,
    The roses royal red,
In softened splendor shadow forth
    The truths thy life hath said.

Oh would the earth w...

Silent I sat, dejected, and alone,
Making in thought the public woes my own,
When, first, arose the image in my breast
Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.[3]
How death, his fun'ral torch and scythe in hand,
Ent'ring the lordliest mansions of the land,
Has laid the gem-illumin'd palace low,
And level'd tribes of Nobles at a blow.
I, next, deplor'd the famed fraternal pair[4]
Too soon to ashes turn'd and empty air,    
The Heroes next, whom snatch'd into the skies
All Belgia saw, and follow'd with her sighs;
But Thee far most I mourn'd, regretted most,
Winton's chief shepherd and her worthiest boast;
Pour'd out in tears I thus complaining said--
Death, next in pow'r to Him who rules the Dead!
Is't not enough that all the wood...

Poet of mighty power, I fain
Would court the muse that honoured thee,
And, like Elisha's spirit, gain
A part of thy intensity;
And share the mantle which she flung
Around thee, when thy lyre was strung.

Though faction's scorn at first did shun
With coldness thy inspired song,
Though clouds of malice passed thy sun,
They could not hide it long;
Its brightness soon exhaled away
Dank night, and gained eternal day.

The critics' wrath did darkly frown
Upon thy muse's mighty lay;
But blasts that break the blossom down
Do only stir the bay;
And thine shall flourish, green and long,
With the eternity of song.

Thy genius saw, in quiet mood,
Gilt fashion's follies pass thee by,
And, like the monarch of the wood,
Towered oer it ...

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled
Above the tide of hours, trouble the air,
And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care;
While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band
With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand,
i(Turn if you may from battles never done,)
I call, as they go by me one by one,
i(Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace,)
i(For him who hears love sing and never cease,)
i(Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:)
i(But gather all for whom no love hath made)
i(A woven silence, or but came to cast)
i(A song into the air, and singing passed)
i(To smile on the pale dawn; and gather you)
i(Who have sought more than is in rain or dew,)
i(Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth,)

Why should such gloomy silence reign;
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want have entered here?

We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay,
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet, is there something gone away.

The moon without as pure and calm
Is shining as that night she shone;
but now, to us she brings no balm,
For something from our hearts is gone.

Something whose absence leaves a void,
A cheerless want in every heart.
Each feels the bliss of all destroyed
And mourns the change - but each apart.

The fire is burning in the grate
As redly as it used to burn,
But still the hearth is desolate
Till Mirth and Love with Peace return.

'Twas P...

 Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun. 

In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,

We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.

By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
'Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.

And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.

Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I'd lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor ...

    I was sitting,
    She was knitting,
And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;
When there struck on us a sigh;
"Ah - what is that?" said I:
"Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound."

    I had not breathed it,
    Nor the night-wind heaved it,
And how it came to us we could not guess;
And we looked up at each face
Framed and glazed there in its place,
Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.

    Half in dreaming,
    "Then its meaning,"
Said we, "must be surely this; that they repine
That we should be the last
Of stocks once unsurpassed,
And unable to keep up their sturdy line."

1916.

I

Into the shadow-white chamber silts the white
Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night
Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts
A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,
Till petals heaped between the window-shafts
    In a drift die there.

A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed pane
Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stain
The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed
That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest
Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead
    Stretched out at rest.

Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed
The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.
Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again
With wounds between them, and suffering like a guest
That will no...

What beck’ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
’Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor’d,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

Why bade ye else, ye pow’rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, ’tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris’ners in ...

Small is my secret--let it pass--
    Small in your life the share I had,
Who sat beside you in the class,
    Awed by the bright superior lad:
        Whom yet with hot and eager face
        I prompted when he missed his place.

For you the call came swift and soon:
    But sometimes in your holidays
You meet me trudging home at noon
    To dinner through the dusty ways,
        And recognized, and with a nod
        Passed on, but never guessed--thank God!

Truly our ways were separate.
    I bent myself to hoe and drill,

Yea, with an honest man to mate,
    Fulfilling God Almighty's will;
        And bore him children. But my prayers
        Were yours--and, only after, theirs.

While you--still loftier, more remote,
   ...

Once again my songs I sing thee,
    Now the spell is broken;
Brothers, yet again I bring thee
    Songs of love the token.
Of my joy and of my sorrow
    Gladly, sadly bringing;--
Summer not a song would borrow--
    Winter sets me singing.

O when life turns sad and lonely,
    When our joys are dead;
When are heard the ravens only
    In the trees o'erhead;
When the stormwind on the bowers
    Wreaks its wicked will,
When the frost paints lying flowers,
    How should I be still?

When the clouds are low descending,
    And the sun is drowned;
When the winter knows no ending,
    And the cold is crowned;
When with evil gloom oppressed
    Lie the ruins bare;
When a sigh escapes the breast,
    Takes us unaware;

We plucked a red rose, you and I,
    All in the summer weather;
Sweet its perfume and rare its bloom,
    Enjoyed by us together.
The rose is dead, the summer fled,
    And bleak winds are complaining;
We dwell apart, but in each heart
    We find the thorn remaining.

We sipped a sweet wine, you and I,
    All in the summer weather.
The beaded draught we lightly quaffed,
    And filled the glass together.
Together we watched its rosy glow,
    And saw its bubbles glitter;
Apart, alone we only know
    The lees are very bitter.

We walked in sunshine, you and I,
    All in the summer weather:
The very night seemed noonday bright,
    When we two were together.
I wonder why with our good-bye
    O'er hill and vale and meadow<...