My heart is full of inarticulate pain,
        And beats laborious. Cold ungenial looks
    Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain,
        Wise in success, well-read in feeble books,
    No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear;
    'Tis winter and low skies when ye appear.

    Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth,
        Come nearer me; too near ye cannot come;
    Make me an atmosphere with your sweet youth;
        Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room;
    Speak not a word, for, see, my spirit lies
    Helpless and dumb; shine on me with your eyes.

    O all wide places, far from feverous towns;
        Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;
    Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;
        Vast pallid clo...

My father took me by the hand
And led me home again;
(He brought me in from sorrow
As you'd bring a child from rain).
The child's place at the hearth-stone,
The child's place at the board,
And the picture at the bed's head
Of wee ones wi' the Lord.

It's just a child come home he sees
To nestle at his arm;
(He brought me in from sorrow
As you'd bring a child from harm).
And of the two of us who sit
By hearth and candle-light,
There's just one hears a woman's heart
Break--breaking in the night.

I bring the simplest pledge of love,
Friend of my earlier days;
Mine is the hand without the glove,
The heart-beat, not the phrase.

How few still breathe this mortal air
We called by school-boy names!
You still, whatever robe you wear,
To me are always James.

That name the kind apostle bore
Who shames the sullen creeds,
Not trusting less, but loving more,
And showing faith by deeds.

What blending thoughts our memories share!
What visions yours and mine
Of May-days in whose morning air
The dews were golden wine,

Of vistas bright with opening day,
Whose all-awakening sun
Showed in life's landscape, far away,
The summits to be won!

The heights are gained. Ah, say not so
For him who smiles at time,
Leaves...

I.

Parent to those, whose infant days
No human parent know;
To thee, O Charity! the praise
Of filial love shall flow.

Base want, and vice, a foe to all!
Round us their snares had thrown.
Had not thy arm, at pity's call,
Embrac'd us for thine own.

O blest the land! where all to Thee
A tender homage pay!
Where indigence and wealth agree
To venerate thy sway!

That land the wrath of Heaven may spare.
When ruthless nations groan;
Her guarded orphan's grateful prayer
May rise to mercy's throne.

Parent to those, whose infant days
No human parent know;
To Thee, O Charity, the praise
Of filial love shall flow.

II.

We have no parent but our God;
Yet will we not in grief despair;
For He thi...

I thank all Gods that I can let thee go,
Lady, without one thought, one base desire
To tarnish that clear vision I gained by fire,
One stain in me I would not have thee know.
That is great might indeed that moves me so
To look upon thy Form, and yet aspire
To look not there, rather than I should mire
That wingéd Spirit that haunts and guards thy brow.

So now I see thee go, secure in this
That what I have is thee, that whole of thee
Whereof thy fair infashioning is sign:
For I see Honour, Love, and Wholesomeness,
And striving ever to reach them, and to be
As they, I keep thee still; for they are thine.

Brave singer of the coming time,
Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,
Good by! Good by! - Our hearts and hands,
Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,
Cry, God be with him, till he stands
His feet among the English daisies!

'T is here we part; - for other eyes
The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,
The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
With heaven above and home before him!

His home! - the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle, - ...

    "Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
    Their homely joys, and destiny obscure:
    Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
    The short and simple annals of the poor."

Gray


I.

        My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!
            No mercenary bard his homage pays;
        With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end:
            My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise:
        To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
            The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
        The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
            What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
    Ah! tho' his work unknown, far happier there, I ween!

II.

        November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;

With soul self-blind
Do n't struggle on merely at last to find
The best of life, the dream, is left behind.

Why desperately!
Struggle and strive? after long years to see
Substance alone has no reality.

To find, alas!
The starry glitter in the mountain pass,
The light you climbed for is no star, but glass.

Help, one and all!
Dreamers we need, not workmen, for the wall
The Tower of Beauty that shall never fall.

O Thou who standest both for God and Man,
O King of Kings, who wore no earthly crown,
O Prince of Peace, unto Thy feet we come,
                And lay our burden down.

The weight had grown beyond our strength to bear,
Thy Love alone the woful thrall can break,
Thy Love, reborn into this world of care,
                Alone can life remake.

How shall we turn to good this weight of ill?
How of our sorrows build anew to Thee?
"Of your own selves ye cannot stand or build,--
                Only through Me,--through Me!"

O, turn once more to Thee the hearts of men,
Work through the leaven of our grief and pain,
Let not these agonies be all in vain,
                Come, dwell with us again!

The world has nailed itself unto its cross;
O...

(For A. K. K.)



What distant mountains thrill and glow
    Beneath our Lady Folly's tread?
Why has she left us, wise in woe,
    Shrewd, practical, uncomforted?
We cannot love or dream or sing,
    We are too cynical to pray,
There is no joy in anything
    Since Lady Folly went away.

Many a knight and gentle maid,
    Whose glory shines from years gone by,
Through ignorance was unafraid
    And as a fool knew how to die.
Saint Folly rode beside Jehanne
    And broke the ranks of Hell with her,
And Folly's smile shone brightly on
    Christ's plaything, Brother Juniper.

Our minds are troubled and defiled
    By study in a weary school.
O for the folly of the child!
    The ready courage of the fool!
Lord, c...

    Dear are some hidden things
            My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,
    Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
            Remembered in the nights.

    But my best treasures are
            Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
    Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
            No reliquaries hold.

    There lie my trespasses,
            Abjured but not disowned.    I’ll not accuse
    Determinism, nor, as the Master {26} says,
            Charge even "the poor Deuce."

    Under my hand they lie,
            My very own, my proved iniquities,
    And though the glory of my life go by
            I hold and garner these.

    How else, how otherwhere.
            How otherwise, shall I discern and grope<...

Ye little flowrets, wild an free,
Yo're welcome, aye as onny!
Ther's but few seets 'at meet mi ee
'At ivver seem as bonny.
Th' furst gift 'at Lizzie gave to me,
Wor a bunch o' bloomin heather,
Shoo pluckt it off o'th' edge o'th' lea,
Whear we'd been set together.

An when shoo put it i' mi hand,
A silent tear wor wellin
Within her ee; - it fell to th' graand,
A doleful stooary tellin.
"It is a little gift," shoo sed,
"An sooin will fade an wither,
Yet, still, befooar its bloom is shed,
We two mun pairt for ivver."

I tried to cheer her trubbled mind,
Wi' tender words endearin;
An raand her neck mi arms entwined,
But grief her breast wor tearin.
"Why should mi parents sell for gold,
Ther dowter's life-long pleasure?
Noa c...

I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
    The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
    And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
    Comfort to those, who in the grave have sown
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
    Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.

Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith, that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast
    Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.

Wit...

Our feet have wandered, wandered far and wide,--
His mercy endureth for ever!
From that strait path in which the Master died,--
His mercy endureth for ever!
Low have we fallen from our high estate,
Long have we lingered, lingered long and late;
But the tenderness of God
Is from age to age the same,
And His Mercy endureth for ever!

There is no sin His Love can not forgive;--
His mercy endureth for ever!
No soul so stained His Love will not receive;
His mercy endureth for ever!
No load of sorrow but His touch can move,
No hedge of thorns that can withstand His Love;
For the tenderness of God
Is from age to age the same,
And His Mercy endureth for ever!

So we will sing, whatever may betide;--

“The river of God is full of water.”
- Psalm.

The rushes are black by the river bed,
And the sheep and the cattle stand
Wistful-eyed, where the waters were,
In a waste of gravel and sand;
Or pass o’er their dying and dead to slake
Their thirst at the slimy pool.
Shall they pine and perish in pangs of drought
While Thy river, O God, is full.

The fields are furrowed, the seed is sown,
But no dews from the heavens are shed;
And where shall the grain for the harvest be?
And how shall the poor be fed?
In waterless gullies they winnow the earth,
New-turned by the miner’s tool;
And the way-farer faints ’neath his lightened load,1
Yet the river of God is full.

For us, O Father, from tropic seas,
Let the clouds be fill...

I
FATHER AND CHILD
She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world wa...

MARCH, tho' the Hours of promise with bright ray
    May gild thy noons, yet, on wild pinion borne,
    Loud Winds more often rudely wake thy morn,
    And harshly hymn thy early-closing day.
Still the chill'd Earth wears, with her tresses shorn,
    Her bleak, grey garb: - yet not for this we mourn,
    Nor, as in Winter's more enduring sway,
    With festal viands, and Associates gay,
Arm 'gainst the Skies; - nor shun the piercing gale;
    But, with blue cheeks, and with disorder'd hair,
    Meet its rough breath; - and peep for primrose pale,
Or lurking violet, under hedges bare;
    And, thro' long evenings, from our Lares[1] claim
    The thrift of stinted grate, and sullen flame.

1: Lares, Hearth-Gods.

O times most bad,
Without the scope
Of hope
Of better to be had!

Where shall I go,
Or whither run
To shun
This public overthrow?

No places are,
This I am sure,
Secure
In this our wasting war.

Some storms we've past,
Yet we must all
Down fall,
And perish at the last.