That is solemn we have ended, --
Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,
Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
Still it be unfurled.

Through rain, through snow,
Through tempest go!
'Mongst streaming caves,
O'er misty waves,
On, on! still on!
Peace, rest have flown!

Sooner through sadness

I'd wish to be slain,
Than all the gladness

Of life to sustain
All the fond yearning

That heart feels for heart,
Only seems burning

To make them both smart.

How shall I fly?
Forestwards hie?
Vain were all strife!
Bright crown of life.
Turbulent bliss,
Love, thou art this!

"Ah, with torn heart I see them still,
    Wee unused clothes and empty cot.
Though glad my love has missed the ill
    That falls to woman's lot.

"No tangled paths for her to tread
    Throughout the coming changeful years;
No desperate weird to dree and dread;
    No bitter lonely tears!

"No woman's piercing crown of thorns
    Will press my aching baby's brow;
No starless nights, no sunless morns,
    Will ever greet her now.

"The clothes that I had wrought with care
    Through weary hours for love's sweet sake
Are laid aside, and with them there
    A heart that seemed to break."

1.
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become
A star among the stars of mortal night,
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

2.
The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,
Is ended, - and the fruit is at thy feet!
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,
Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green,
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;
Bu...

        One time in Arcadie's fair bowers
    There met a bright immortal band,
        To choose their emblems from the flowers
    That made an Eden of that land.

        Sweet Constancy, with eyes of hope,
    Strayed down the garden path alone
        And gathered sprays of heliotrope,
    To place in clusters at her zone.

        True Friendship plucked the ivy green,
    Forever fresh, forever fair.
        Inconstancy with flippant mien
    The fading primrose chose to wear.

        One moment Love the rose paused by;
    But Beauty picked it for her hair.
        Love paced the garden with a sigh
    He found no fitting emblem there.

        Then suddenly he saw a flame,
    A conflagration turned to bloom;
        It ...

        A soaking sedge,
        A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,

        Low clouds and rain,
        And loneliness and languor worse than pain.

        Mottled with moss,
        Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.

        Shrill streaks of light
        Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,

        And low between,
        The sombre cedar and the ivy green.

        Upon the stone
        Of each in turn who called this land his own

        The gray rain beats
        And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,

        And at my eaves
        A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.

How passing sad!    Listen, it sings again!
    Art thou a spirit, that amongst the boughs,
The livelong day dost chaunt that wond'rous strain
    Making wan Dian stoop her silver brows
Out of the clouds to hear thee?    Who shall say,
Thou lone one! that thy melody is gay,
Let him come listen now to that one note,
    That thou art pouring o'er and o'er again
Through the sweet echoes of thy mellow throat,
    With such a sobbing sound of deep, deep pain,
I prithee cease thy song! for from my heart
Thou hast made memory's bitter waters start,
    And filled my weary eyes with the soul's rain.

Love thy mother, little one!
Kiss and clasp her neck again, -
Hereafter she may have a son
Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain.
Love thy mother, little one!

Gaze upon her living eyes,
And mirror back her love for thee, -
Hereafter thou mayst shudder sighs
To meet them when they cannot see.
Gaze upon her living eyes!

Press her lips the while they glow
With love that they have often told, -
Hereafter thou mayst press in woe,
And kiss them till thine own are cold.
Press her lips the while they glow!

Oh, revere her raven hair!
Although it be not silver-gray;
Too early Death, led on by Care,
May snatch save one dear lock away.
Oh, revere her raven hair!

Pray for her at eve and morn,
That Heaven may long the stroke d...

I hold your trembling hand to-night - and yet
I may not know what wealth of bliss is mine,
My heart is such a curious design
Of trust and jealousy! Your eyes are wet -
So must I think they jewel some regret,
And lo, the loving arms that round me twine
Cling only as the tendrils of a vine
Whose fruit has long been gathered: I forget,
While crimson clusters of your kisses press
Their wine out on my lips, my royal fair
Of rapture, since blind fancy needs must guess
They once poured out their sweetness otherwhere,
With fuller flavoring of happiness
Than e'en your broken sobs may now declare.

Around me broods the dim, mysterious Night,
    Star-lit and still.
No whisper comes across the Plain,
Asleep beneath the breezes light,
Which scarcely stir the growing grain.
Slow chimes the quiet midnight hour
In some unseen and distant tower,
While round me broods the vague, mysterious Night,
    Star-lit, and cool, and still.

And I must desecrate this silent time
    Of drowsy dreams!
On mighty wings towards the sky,
Towards the stars, I have to climb
And o'er the sleeping country fly,
And such far-echoing clamour make
That all the villages must wake.
So must I desecrate this quiet time
    Of soft and drowsy dreams!

The hour comes ... soon must I say farewell
    To this fair earth.
Then to my little room I go
Where I ...

False world, good night! since thou hast brought
That hour upon my morn of age;
Henceforth I quit thee from my thought,
My part is ended on thy stage.

Yes, threaten, do. Alas! I fear
As little as I hope from thee:
I know thou canst not show nor bear
More hatred than thou hast to me.

My tender, first, and simple years
Thou didst abuse and then betray;
Since stir’d’st up jealousies and fears,
When all the causes were away.

Then in a soil hast planted me
Where breathe the basest of thy fools;
Where envious arts professèd be,
And pride and ignorance the schools;

Where nothing is examined, weigh’d,
But as ’tis rumour’d, so believed;
Where every freedom is betray’d,
And every goodness tax’d or grieved.

But what we’re...

I. Winter in Northumberland


Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,"
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt-sea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Sea-drift makes dimmer
The beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves qu...

Remember me when I am gone away,
    Gone far away into the silent land;
    When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
    You tell me of our future that you planned:
    Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
    For if the darkness and corruption leave
    A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad.

I.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

IV.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

V.
So wore night; the East was gray,
...

Hearken, oh hearken! let your souls behind you
Turn, gently moved!
Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,
O lost, beloved!
Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels,
They press and pierce:
Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,
Voice throbs in verse.
We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden
A time ago:
God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden
To feed you so.
But now our right hand hath no cup remaining,
No work to do,
The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining
The whole earth through.
Most ineradicable stains, for showing
(Not interfused!)
That brighter colours were the world’s foregoing,
Than shall be used.
Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely
For years and years,
The noise beside you, dripping c...

When she comes home again! A thousand ways
I fashion, to myself, the tenderness
Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble - yes;
And touch her, as when first in the old days
I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise
Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress.
Then silence: And the perfume of her dress:
The room will sway a little, and a haze
Cloy eyesight - soulsight, even - for a space:
And tears - yes; and the ache here in the throat,
To know that I so ill deserve the place
Her arms make for me; and the sobbing note
I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face
Again is hidden in the old embrace.

The sun o’er the waters was throwing
In the freshness of morning its beams;
And the breast of the ocean seemed glowing
With glittering silvery streams:
A bark in the distance was bounding
Away for the land on her lee;
And the boatswain’s shrill whistle resounding
Came over and over the sea.
The breezes blew fair and were guiding
Her swiftly along on her track,
And the billows successively passing,
Were lost in the distance aback.
The sailors seemed busy preparing
For anchor to drop ere the night;
The red rusted cables in fathoms
Were haul’d from their prisons to light.
Each rope and each brace was attended
By stout-hearted sons of the main,
Whose voices, in unison blended,
Sang many a merry-toned strain.

Forgotten their care and their...

Yes--loving is a painful thrill,
And not to love more painful still
But oh, it is the worst of pain,
To love and not be loved again!
Affection now has fled from earth,
Nor fire of genius, noble birth,
Nor heavenly virtue, can beguile,
From beauty's cheek one favoring smile.
Gold is the woman's only theme,
Gold is the woman's only dream.
Oh! never be that wretch forgiven--
Forgive him not, indignant heaven!
Whose grovelling eyes could first adore,
Whose heart could pant for sordid ore.
Since that devoted thirst began,
Man has forgot to feel for man;
The pulse of social life is dead,
And all its fonder feelings fled!
War too has sullied Nature's charms,
For gold provokes the world to arms;
And oh! the worst of all its arts,
It renders as...