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Unfathomable Night! how dost thou sweep
Over the flooded earth, and darkly hide
The mighty city under thy full tide;
Making a silent palace for old Sleep,
Like his own temple under the hush'd deep,
Where all the busy day he doth abide,
And forth at the late dark, outspreadeth wide

His dusky wings, whence the cold waters sweep!
How peacefully the living millions lie!
Lull'd unto death beneath his poppy spells;
There is no breath - no living stir - no cry
No tread of foot - no song - no music-call -
Only the sound of melancholy bells -
The voice of Time - survivor of them all!

City and beloved are far behind.
I am so betrayed and alone.
Slowly I move from one
Leg to the other.
Around me strange doors screech.
I reach for dagger and gun.
Ah, if I were only at home
With my mother.

Uplifted and lone, set apart with our love
    On the crest of a soft swelling down
Cloud shadows that meet on the grass at our feet
    Sail on above Wendover town.

Wendover town takes the smile of the sun
    As if yearning and strife were no more,
From her red roofs float high neither plaint neither sigh,
    All the weight of the world is our own.

Would that life were more kind and that souls might have peace
    As the wide mead from storm and from bale,
We bring up our own care, but how sweet over there
    And how strange is their calm in the vale.

As if trouble at noon had achieved a deep sleep,
    Lapped and lulled from the weariful fret,
Or shot down out of day, had a hint dropt away
    As if grief might attain to forget.

No...

The flag is listless, limp. It dances not.
        As deep the sea breathes from a gentle breast
As any bride who dreams at love's behest,
        And wakes and sighs, then casts with dreams her lot.
Sails hang upon the masts--useless-forgot--
        Like folded standards which the warriors wrest
And bring home broken from the battle's crest.
        The sailors rest them in some sheltered spot.

O Sea! within your unknown deeps concealed,
        When storms are wild, your monsters dream and sleep,
And all their cruelty for the sunlight keep.
        Thus, Soul of Mine, in your sad deeps concealed
The monsters sleep--when wild are storms. They start
        From out some blue sky's peace to seize my heart.

Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought
Nurtures within its unimagined caves,
In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,
Giving a voice to its mysterious waves -

    Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
    In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
    And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
    Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

    And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
    From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
    And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
    In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

    The house, that house, O now what change has come to it,
    Its crude red-brick façade, its roof of slate;
    What imperceptible swift hand has given it
    A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

    No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,
    So inharmonious, so ill arranged;
    That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;
    No, it is not that an...

Light, as when dawn takes wing and smites the sea,
Smote England when his day bade Marlowe be.
No fire so keen had thrilled the clouds of time
Since Dante's breath made Italy sublime.
Earth, bright with flowers whose dew shone soft as tears,
Through Chaucer cast her charm on eyes and ears:
The lustrous laughter of the love-lit earth
Rang, leapt, and lightened in his might of mirth.
Deep moonlight, hallowing all the breathless air,
Made earth and heaven for Spenser faint and fair.
But song might bid not heaven and earth be one
Till Marlowe's voice gave warning of the sun.
Thought quailed and fluttered as a wounded bird
Till passion fledged the wing of Marlowe's word.
Faith born of fear bade hope and doubt be dumb
Till Marlowe's pride bade light or darkness come.

The minstrel of the classic lay
Of love and wine who sings
Still found the fingers run astray
That touched the rebel strings.

Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,
Of Atreus and his line;
But all the jocund echoes rung
With songs of love and wine.

Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught
Some fresher fancy's gleam;
My truant accents find, unsought,
The old familiar theme.

Love, Love! but not the sportive child
With shaft and twanging bow,
Whose random arrows drove us wild
Some threescore years ago;

Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
The urchin blind and bare,
But Love, with spectacles and staff,
And scanty, silvered hair.

Our heads with frosted locks are white,
Our roofs are thatched with snow,
But red, in c...

Evening brings us home,--
From our wanderings afar,
From our multifarious labours,
From the things that fret and jar;
From the highways and the byways,
From the hill-tops and the vales;
From the dust and heat of city street,
And the joys of lonesome trails,--
            Evening brings us home at last,
            To Thee.

From plough and hoe and harrow, from the burden of the day,
From the long and lonely furrow in the stiff reluctant clay,
From the meads where streams are purling,
From the moors where mists are curling,--
            Evening brings us home at last,
            To rest, and warmth, and Thee.

From the pastures where the white lambs to their dams are ever crying,
From the byways where the Night lambs Thy
Love are crucifyin...

The Sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,
Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire,
Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams,
Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.
Look round; of all the clouds not one is moving;
'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving.
Silent, and steadfast as the vaulted sky,
The boundless plain of waters seems to lie:
Comes that low sound from breezes rustling o'er
The grass-crowned headland that conceals the shore?
No; 'tis the earth-voice of the mighty sea,
Whispering how meek and gentle he 'can' be!

Thou Power supreme! who, arming to rebuke
Offenders, dost put off the gracious look,
And clothe thyself with terrors like the flood
Of ocean roused into its fiercest mood,
Whatever discipline thy Will orda...

Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time
And Nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament,
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,

His sheet of lead,
And trophies buried:
Go, get them where he earned them when alive;
As resolutely dig or dive.

Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand:
'T will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!

As unseen spheres cast shadows on the Earth
    Some unknown cause depresses me to-night.
The house is full of laughter and sweet mirth,
    The day has held but pleasure and delight.

Down in the parlour some one blithely sings;
    A chime of laughter echoes in the hall;
But all unseen by other eyes, strange things
    Rat-like do seem to glide along the wall.

I rise, and laugh, and say I will not care;
    I call them idle fancies, one and all.
And yet, suspended by a single hair,
    The sword of Fate seems trembling soon to fall.

I leave the house, and walk the lighted street;
    And mingle with the pleasure-seeking throng.
And close behind me follow spectre feet
    That pause with me, or with me move along.

I seek my room, and cl...

Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
    To-night the planets and the stars
    Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!

For I shall lie as dead
Though yet I am above the ground;
    All passionless, with scarce a breath,
    With hands of rest and eyes of death,
I shall be carried swiftly round.

Or if my life should break
The idle night with doubtful gleams,
    Through mossy arches will I go,
    Through arches ruinous and low,
And chase the true and false in dreams.

Why should I fall asleep?
When I am still upon my bed
    The moon will shine, the winds will rise
    And all around and through the skies
The light clouds travel o'er my head!

O busy, busy things,

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nou...

Caught Susanner whistlin'; well,
It's most nigh too good to tell.
'Twould 'a' b'en too good to see
Ef it had n't b'en fur me,
Comin' up so soft an' sly
That she didn' hear me nigh.
I was pokin' 'round that day,
An' ez I come down the way,
First her whistle strikes my ears,--
Then her gingham dress appears;
So with soft step up I slips.
Oh, them dewy, rosy lips!
Ripe ez cherries, red an' round,
Puckered up to make the sound.
She was lookin' in the spring,
Whistlin' to beat anything,--
"Kitty Dale" er "In the Sweet."
I was jest so mortal beat
That I can't quite ricoleck
What the toon was, but I 'speck
'T was some hymn er other, fur
Hymny things is jest like her.
Well she went on fur awhile
With her face all in a smile,
An'...

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt,
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn't want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning cr...

On Hounslow Heath - and close beside the road,
As western travellers may oft have seen, -
A little house some years ago there stood,
        A minikin abode;
And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood:
The walls of white, the window-shutters green, -
Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West
        (Though now at rest),
On which it used to wander to and fro,
Because its master ne'er maintained a rider,
Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;
But made his business travel for itself,
        Till he had made his pelf,
And then retired - if one may call it so,
        Of a roadsider.

Perchance, the very race and constant riot
Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,
Made him more relish the repose and quiet
Of his now sedentary car...

Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red;
Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed,
That she thy càreer may with roses spread;
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing;
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence the ugly night
Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.
This is that happy morn,
That day, long wishèd day
Of all my life so dark
(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn
And fates not hope betray),
Which, only white, deserves
A diamond for ever should it mark:
This is the morn should bring into this grove
My ...