Nature

    I know what beauty is, for thou
        Hast set the world within my heart;
        Of me thou madest it a part;
    I never loved it more than now.

    I know the Sabbath afternoons;
        The light asleep upon the graves:
        Against the sky the poplar waves;
    The river murmurs organ tunes.

    I know the spring with bud and bell;
        The hush in summer woods at night;
        Autumn, when trees let in more light;
    Fantastic winter's lovely spell.

    I know the rapture music gives,
        Its mystery of ordered tones:
        Dream-muffled soul, it loves and moans,
    And, half-alive, comes in and lives.

    And verse I know, whose concord high
        Of thought and music lifts the soul
        Where ...

ON THE EVER-LAMENTED LOSS OF THE TWO YEW-TREES IN THE PARISH OF CHILTHORNE, SOMERSET. 1706. IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID

In ancient times, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hospitality.
    It happen'd on a winter night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguis'd in tatter'd habits, went
To a small village down in Kent;
Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
They begg'd from door to door in vain,
Try'd ev'ry tone might pity win;
But not a soul would let them in.
    Our wand'ring saints, in woful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having thro' all the village past,
To a small c...

To Isabel Swinburne.

The far green westward heavens are bland,
The far green Wiltshire downs are clear
As these deep meadows hard at hand:
The sight knows hardly far from near,
Nor morning joy from evening cheer.
In cottage garden-plots their bees
Find many a fervent flower to seize
And strain and drain the heart away
From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas
At every turn on every way.
But gladliest seems one flower to expand
Its whole sweet heart all round us here;
’Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land.
Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear
Where engines yell and halt and veer
Can vex the sense of him who sees
One flower-plot midway, that for trees
Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey
For bowers like those that take the breeze

"Whose are the little beds," I asked,
"Which in the valleys lie?"
Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
And no one made reply.

"Perhaps they did not hear," I said;
"I will inquire again.
Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
So thick upon the plain?"

"'T is daisy in the shortest;
A little farther on,
Nearest the door to wake the first,
Little leontodon.

"'T is iris, sir, and aster,
Anemone and bell,
Batschia in the blanket red,
And chubby daffodil."

Meanwhile at many cradles
Her busy foot she plied,
Humming the quaintest lullaby
That ever rocked a child.

"Hush! Epigea wakens! --
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora's cheek is crimson, --
She's dreaming of the woods."

Then, turning from ...

The days of these two years like busy ants
Have gone, confused and happy and distressed,
Rich, yet sad with aching wants,
Crowded, yet lonely and unblessed.

I stare back as they vanish in a swarm,
Seeming how purposeless, how mean and vain,
Till creeping joy and brief alarm
Are gone and prick me not again.

The days are gone, yet still this heart of fire
Smouldering, smoulders on with ancient love;
And the red embers of desire
I would not, oh, nor dare remove!

Where is the bosom my head rested on,
The arms that caught my boy's head, the soft kiss?
Where is the light of your eyes gone?--
For now I know what darkness is....

It is the loneliness, the loneliness,
Since she that brought me here has left me here
With the sharp need o...

There is a saying of renown,
"God made the country, man the town."
Well, everybody to his trade!
But man likes best the thing he made.
The town has little space to spare;
The country has both space and air;
The town's confined, the country free,
Yet, spite of all, the town for me.

For when the hills are grey and night is falling,
And the winds sigh drearily,
I hear the city calling, calling, calling,
With a voice like the great sea.

I used to think I'd like to be
A hermit living lonesomely,
Apart from human care or ken,
Afar from. all the haunts of men:
Then I would read in Nature's book,
And drink clear water from the brook,
And live a life of sweet content,
In hollow tree, or cave, or tent.

This was a dream of callow You...

O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

O the engineer's joys!
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam the merry shriek the steam-whistle the laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over...

In the deep shadow of the porch
A slender bind-weed springs,
And climbs, like airy acrobat,
The trellises, and swings
And dances in the golden sun
In fairy loops and rings.

Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew,
Like pearly chalices,
Hold cooling fountains, to refresh
The butterflies and bees;
And humming-birds on vibrant wings
Hover, to drink at ease.

And up and down the garden-bed,
Mid box and thyme and yew,
And spikes of purple lavender,
And spikes of larkspur blue,
The bind-weed tendrils win their way,
And find a passage through.

With touches coaxing, delicate,
And arts that never tire,
They tie the rose-trees each to each,
The lilac to the brier,
Making for graceless things a grace,
With steady, swe...

From Swindon out to White Horse Hill
I walked, in morning rain,
And saw your shadow lying there.
As clear and plain
As lies the White Horse on the Hill
I saw your shadow lying there.

Over the wide green downs and bleak,
Unthinking, free I walked,
And saw your shadow fluttering by.
Almost it talked,
Answering what I dared not speak
While thoughts of you ran fluttering by....

So on to Baydon sauntered, teased
With that pure native air.
Sometimes the sweetness of wild thyme
The strings of care
Did pluck; sometimes my soul was eased
With more than sweetness of wild thyme.

Sometimes within a pool I caught
Your face, upturned to mine.
And where sits Chilton by the waters
Your look did shine
Wildly in the mill foam that...

Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
With strength beyond the strength of men,
And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave;
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own,
North, South, and East and West, made all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
Blazed down, and every chain was riven!

Welcome from each and all to her
Whose Wooing of the Minister
Revealed the warm heart of the man
Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
And taught the kinship of the love
Of man below and God abo...

Tu semper amoris
Sis memor, et cari comitis ne abscedat imago.

VAL. FLAC. 'Argonaut', iv. 36.


1.

Friend of my youth! when young we rov'd,
Like striplings, mutually belov'd,
With Friendship's purest glow;
The bliss, which wing'd those rosy hours,
Was such as Pleasure seldom showers
On mortals here below.


2.

The recollection seems, alone,
Dearer than all the joys I've known,
When distant far from you:
Though pain, 'tis still a pleasing pain,
To trace those days and hours again,
And sigh again, adieu!


3.

My pensive mem'ry lingers o'er,
Those scenes to be enjoy'd no more,
Those scenes regretted ever;
The measure of our youth is full,
Life's evening dream is dark and dull,

In this chill morning of a wintry Spring
    I look into the gloom'd and rainy vale;
    The sullen clouds, the stormy winds assail,
    Lour on the fields, and with impetuous wing
Disturb the lake: - but Love and Memory cling
    To their known scene, in this cold influence pale;
    Yet priz'd, as when it bloom'd in Summer's gale,
    Ting'd by his setting sun. - When Sorrows fling,
Or slow Disease, thus, o'er some beauteous Form
    Their shadowy languors, Form, devoutly dear
    As thine to me, HONORA, with more warm
And anxious gaze the eyes of Love sincere
    Bend on the charms, dim in their tintless snow,
    Than when with health's vermilion hues they glow.

Why did I sketch an upland green,
And put the figure in
Of one on the spot with me? -
For now that one has ceased to be seen
The picture waxes akin
To a wordless irony.

If you go drawing on down or cliff
Let no soft curves intrude
Of a woman's silhouette,
But show the escarpments stark and stiff
As in utter solitude;
So shall you half forget.

Let me sooner pass from sight of the sky
Than again on a thoughtless day
Limn, laugh, and sing, and rhyme
With a woman sitting near, whom I
Paint in for love, and who may
Be called hence in my time!

From an old note.

(1917)

The first four lines of this poem were written for inscription on the first joint memorial to the American and British soldiers who fell in the Revolutionary War. This memorial was recently dedicated at Princeton.


I.

Here Freedom stood, by slaughtered friend and foe,
    And ere the wrath paled or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages: then, with eyes aglow,
    Laid them, to wait that future, side by side.


II.

Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
    Through dog-wood red and white,
And round the gray quadrangles, line by line,
    The windows fill with light,
Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower,
    Twin lanthorns of the law,
And those cream-white magnolia boughs embower
    Th...

A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven's height
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.

Now how could I, with gold to spare,
Who know the harlot's arms, and wine,
Sit in this green field all alone,
If Nature was not truly mine?

That Pleasure life wakes stale at morn,
From heavy sleep that no rest brings:
This life of quiet joy wakes fresh,
And claps its wings at morn, and sings.

So here sit I, alone till noon,
In one long dream of quiet bliss;
I hear the lark and share his joy,
With no more winedrops than were his.

Such, Nature, is thy charm and power,
Since I have made the Muse my wife,
To keep me from the harlot's arms,
And save me from a drunkard's life.

If to Tradition faith be due,
And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war;
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain,
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of fern-thatched Hut on heathy moor:
B...

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing, "The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh,
O silly lover!"
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and d...