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Father! to Thy suffering poor
Strength and grace and faith impart,
And with Thy own love restore
Comfort to the broken heart!
Oh, the failing ones confirm
With a holier strength of zeal!
Give Thou not the feeble worm
Helpless to the spoiler's heel!

Father! for Thy holy sake
We are spoiled and hunted thus;
Joyful, for Thy truth we take
Bonds and burthens unto us
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all,
Weary with our daily task,
That Thy truth may never fall
Through our weakness, Lord, we ask.

Round our fired and wasted homes
Flits the forest-bird unscared,
And at noon the wild beast comes
Where our frugal meal was shared;
For the song of praises there
Shrieks the crow the livelong day;
For the sound of evening prayer
Ho...

What needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
Of saints?
In endless mirth,
She thinks not on
What's said or done
In earth:
She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
She hears;
Nor does she mind,
Or think on't now,
That ever thou
Wast kind:
But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
Thy love.
Forbear, therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
No more.

Do not worry if I scurry from the grill room in a hurry,
    Dropping hastily my curry and retiring into balk;
Do not let it cause you wonder if, by some mischance or blunder,
    We encounter on the Underground and I get out and walk.

If I double as a cub'll when you meet him in the stubble,
    Do not think I am in trouble or attempt to make a fuss;
Do not judge me melancholy or attribute it to folly
    If I leave the Metropolitan and travel 'n a bus.

Do not quiet your anxiety by giving me a diet,
    Or by base resort to vi et armis fold me to your arms,
And let no suspicious tremor violate your wonted phlegm or
    Any fear that Harold's memory is faithless to your charms.

For my passion as I dash on in that disconcerting fashion
    Is as arden...

Comrades, comrades, have me buried
Like a warrior of the sea,
With a flag across my breast
And my sword upon my knee.

Steering out from vanished headlands
For a harbor on no chart,
With the winter in the rigging,
With the ice-wind in my heart,

Down the bournless slopes of sea-room,
With the long gray wake behind,
I have sailed my cruiser steady
With no pilot but the wind.

Battling with relentless pirates
From the lower seas of Doom,
I have kept the colors flying
Through the roar of drift and gloom.

Scudding where the shadow foemen
Hang about us grim and stark,
Broken spars and shredded canvas,
We are racing for the dark.

Sped and blown abaft the sunset
Like a shriek the storm has caught;
But the helm ...

Oh Peace, oh come with me and dwell -
But stop, for there's the bell.
Oh Peace! for thee I go and sit in churches
On Wednesday, when there's very few
In loft or pew -
Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch's.
Oh Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage -
Hush! there's a carriage.
Oh Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods -
The five Miss Woods!
Oh Peace! thou art the goddess I adore -
There come some more.
Oh Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet -
That's Lord Dunn's footman, for he loves a riot!

Oh Peace!
Knocks will not cease.
Oh Peace! thou wert for human comfort plann'd -
That's Weippert's band.
Oh Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches -
I hear the sound of coaches.
Oh Peace! oh Peace! another carriage stops -
It's...

A rose of perfect red, embossed
With silver sheens of crystal frost,
Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost.

High passion throbbing in a sphere
That Art hath wrought of diamond clear,
- A great heart beating in a tear.

The listening soul is full of dreams
That shape the wondrous-varying themes
As cries of men or plash of streams.

Or noise of summer rain-drops round
That patter daintily a-ground
With hints of heaven in the sound.

Or noble wind-tones chanting free
Through morning-skies across the sea
Wild hymns to some strange majesty.

O, if one trope, clear-cut and keen,
May type the art of Song's best queen,
White-hot of soul, white-chaste of mien,

On Music's heart doth Nilsson dwell
As if a Swedish snow-flake ...

The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff, the Man!

But, in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us,,
For no laid course prepare,
And presently o’ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear.

The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end,
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend,
What traffic wrecks macadam,
What concrete should endure,
But we, poor Sons of Adam,
Have no such literature...

Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest,
By twilight premature of cloud and rain;
Nor does that roaring wind deaden his strain
Who carols thinking of his Love and nest,
And seems, as more incited, still more blest.
Thanks; thou hast snapped a fireside Prisoner's chain,
Exulting Warbler! eased a fretted brain,
And in a moment charmed my cares to rest.
Yes, I will forth, bold Bird! and front the blast,
That we may sing together, if thou wilt,
So loud, so clear, my Partner through life's day,
Mute in her nest love-chosen, if not love-built
Like thine, shall gladden, as in seasons past,
Thrilled by loose snatches of the social Lay.

Earthly gods my lyre shall win your praise,
Though but wont its gentle sounds to raise
When the joyous feast the people throng;
Softly at your pompous-sounding names,
Shyly round your greatness purple flames,
Trembles now my song.

Answer! shall I strike the golden string,
When, borne on by exultation's wing,
O'er the battle-field your chariots trail?
When ye, from the iron grasp set free,
For your mistress' soft arms, joyously
Change your pond'rous mail?

Shall my daring hymn, ye gods, resound,
While the golden splendor gleams around,
Where, by mystic darkness overcome,
With the thunderbolt your spleen may play,
Or in crime humanity array,
Till the grave is dumb?

Say! shall peace 'neath crowns be now my theme?
Shall I boast, ye ...

Come, my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, how wise is love -
Love grown old and grey with years,
Love whose blood is thinned with tears.

Philosophic lover I,
Broke my heart, its love run dry,
And I warble passion's words
But to hear them sing like birds.

When the lightning struck my side,
Love shrieked and for ever died,
Leaving nought of him behind
But these playthings of the mind.

Now the real play is over
I can only act a lover,
Now the mimic play begins
With its puppet joys and sins.

When the heart no longer feels,
And the blood with caution steals,
Then, ah! then - my heart, forgive! -
Then we dare begin to live.

Dipped in Stygian waves of pain,
We can never feel again;
Time may hurl his...

A face in the mist, with rain around,
clings to bare leaves frowning.
A face through the mist, convulsed,
plays stationary, perching from twigs.
A face, not knowing it, trust it is good.

My dreams are bubbles of cool light,
Sunbeams mingled in the light green
Waters of your bath.

Through fretted spaces in the olive wood
My love adventures with the white sun.

I dive into the ice-coloured shadows
Where the water is like light blue flowers
Dancing on mirrors of silver.

The sun rolls under the waters of your bath
Like the body of a strong swimmer.

And now you cool your feet,
Which have the look of apple flowers,
Under the water on the oval marble
Coloured like yellow roses.

Your scarlet nipples
Waver under the green kisses of the water,
Flowers drowned in a mountain stream.

From the Modern Turkish.

Amor che meco al buon tempo ti stavi.

HE VENTS HIS SORROW TO ALL WHO WITNESSED HIS FORMER FELICITY.


    Love, that in happier days wouldst meet me here
Along these meads that nursed our kindred strains;
And that old debt to clear which still remains,
Sweet converse with the stream and me wouldst share:
Ye flowers, leaves, grass, woods, grots, rills, gentle air,
Low valleys, lofty hills, and sunny plains:
The harbour where I stored my love-sick pains,
And all my various chance, my racking care:
Ye playful inmates of the greenwood shade;
Ye nymphs, and ye that in the waves pursue
That life its cool and grassy bottom lends:--
My days were once so fair; now dark and dread
As death that makes them so. Thus the world through
On each as soon as bo...

Six thankful weeks,--and let it be
A meter of prosperity,--
In my coat I bore this book,
And seldom therein could I look,
For I had too much to think,
Heaven and earth to eat and drink.
Is he hapless who can spare
In his plenty things so rare?

When days grow long, and brain and hands grow weary,
    And hot the city street,
Forth to the haunts, by cooling winds made cheery
    We fly with willing feet.

We leave our cares and labours all behind us,
    The city's noise and din,
And, hid securely where they cannot find us,
    We drink the sunshine in.

But when the days grow long with bitter sorrow,
    And hearts grow sick with woe,
Where are the haunts that we may seek to-morrow?
    Where can we hide or go?

Holds earth no nook, where hearts with sorrow breaking,
    May find a summer's rest?
A season's respite from the weary aching
    That gnaws within the breast?

O God! if we could fly and leave behind us
    Our crosses and our grief,
Could hide a season where t...

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Down in the street the last late hansoms go
        Still westward, but with backward eyes of red
        The harlot shuffles to her lonely bed;
The tall policeman pauses but to throw
A flash into the empty portico;
        Then he too passes, and his lonely tread
        Links all the long-drawn gas-lights on a thread
And ties them to one planet swinging low.

O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
        O'er Helen's bosom in the trancèd west--
        To watch the hours heave by upon her breast
And at her parted lip for dreams attend:
        If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deem'd.
        Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?