If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here, and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, ...

Why above others was I so blessed
    And honoured? to be chosen one
To hold you, sleeping, against my breast,
    As now I may hold your only son.

Twelve months ago; that wonderful night!
    You gave your life to me in a kiss;
Have I done well, for that past delight,
    In return, to have given you this?

Look down at his face, your face, beloved,
    His eyes are azure as yours are blue.
In every line of his form is proved
    How well I loved you, and only you.

I felt the secret hope at my heart
    Turned suddenly to the living joy,
And knew that your life and mine had part
    As golden grains in a brass alloy.

And learning thus, that your child was mine,
    Thrilled by the sense of its stirring life,
I held myself as a...

In the mildest, greenest grove
Blest by sprite or fairy,
Where the melting echoes rove,
Voices sweet and airy;
    Where the streams
    Drink the beams
    Of the Sun,
    As they run
    Riverward
    Through the sward,
A shepherd went astray -
E'en gods have lost their way.

Every bird had sought its nest,
And each flower-spirit
Dreamed of that delicious rest
Mortals ne'er inherit;
    Through the trees
    Swept the breeze,
    Bringing airs
    Unawares
    Through the grove,
    Until love
Came down upon his heart,
Refusing to depart.

Hungrily he quaffed the strain,
Sweeter still, and clearer,
Drenched with music's mellow rain,
Nearer - nearer - dearer!

    Chains of sound
...

Bestow, dear Lord, upon our youth
The gift of saving grace;
And let the seed of sacred truth
Fall in a fruitful place.


Grace is a plant, where’er it grows,
Of pure and heavenly root;
But fairest in the youngest shows,
And yields the sweetest fruit.


Ye careless ones, O hear betimes
The voice of sovereign love!
Your youth is stain’d with many crimes,
But mercy reigns above.


True, you are young, but there’s a stone
Within the youngest breast;
Or half the crimes which you have done
Would rob you of your rest.


For you the public prayer is made,
Oh! join the public prayer!
For you the secret tear is shed,
Oh! shed yourselves a tear!


We pray that you may early prove
The Spirit’s powe...

With every rising of the sun
Think of your life as just begun.

The past has shrived and buried deep
All yesterdays - there let them sleep,

Nor seek to summon back one ghost
Of that innumerable host.

Concern yourself with but to-day;
Woo it and teach it to obey

Your wish and will.    Since time began
To-day has been the friend of man.

But in his blindness and his sorrow
He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.

You and to-day! a soul sublime
And the great pregnant hour of time.

With God between to bind the train,
Go forth, I say - attain - attain.

She comes when I am grieving and doth say,
"Child, here is that shall drive your grief away."
When I am hopeless, kisses me and stirs
My breast with the strong lively courage of hers.
Proud--she will humble me with but a word,
Or with mild mockery at my folly gird;
Fickle--she holds me with her loyal eyes;
Remorseful--tells of neighbouring Paradise;
Envious--"Be not so mad, so mad," she saith,
"Envied and envier both race with Death"
She my good Angel is: and who is she?--
The soul's divine Physician, Memory.

It was the hour, when of diurnal heat
No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon,
O'erpower'd by earth, or planetary sway
Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees
His Greater Fortune up the east ascend,
Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone;
When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape
There came, with lips that stammer'd, eyes aslant,
Distorted feet, hands maim'd, and colour pale.

I look'd upon her; and as sunshine cheers
Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look
Unloos'd her tongue, next in brief space her form
Decrepit rais'd erect, and faded face
With love's own hue illum'd. Recov'ring speech
She forthwith warbling such a strain began,
That I, how loth soe'er, could scarce have held
Attention from the song. "I," thus she sang,
"I am the ...

WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1693


Strange to conceive, how the same objects strike
At distant hours the mind with forms so like!
Whether in time, Deduction's broken chain
Meets, and salutes her sister link again;
Or haunted Fancy, by a circling flight,
Comes back with joy to its own seat at night;
Or whether dead Imagination's ghost
Oft hovers where alive it haunted most;
Or if Thought's rolling globe, her circle run,
Turns up old objects to the soul her sun;
Or loves the Muse to walk with conscious pride
O'er the glad scene whence first she rose a bride:
    Be what it will; late near yon whispering stream,
Where her own Temple was her darling theme;
There first the visionary sound was heard,
When to poetic view the Muse appear'd.
Such seem'd her eye...

The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word
Is soft as the least wave’s lapse in a still small reach.
From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred,
From headland ever to headland and breach to breach
Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach
With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and chide,
The lone way lures me along by a chance untried
That haply, if hope dissolve not and faith be whole,
Not all for nought shall I seek, with a dream for guide.
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
The trackless ways are untravelled of sail or bird;
The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach.
The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard,
The viewless void to be visible: all and each,
A closure of calm no clamour of storm can b...

On Sunday mornings, freed from hard employ,
How oft I mark the mischievous young boy
With anxious haste his pole and lines provide,
For make-shifts oft crook'd pins to thread were tied;
And delve his knife with wishes ever warm
In rotten dunghills for the grub and worm,
The harmless treachery of his hooks to bait;
Tracking the dewy grass with many a mate,
To seek the brook that down the meadows glides,
Where the grey willow shadows by its sides,
Where flag and reed in wild disorder spread,
And bending bulrush bows its taper head;
And, just above the surface of the floods,
Where water-lilies mount their snowy buds,
On whose broad swimming leaves of glossy green
The shining dragon-fly is often seen;
Where hanging thorns, with roots wash'd bare, appear,
That...

Good and great God, can I not think of thee
But it must straight my melancholy be?
Is it interpreted in me disease
That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease?
Oh be thou witness, that the reins dost know
And hearts of all, if I be sad for show,
And judge me after; if I dare pretend
To ought but grace or aim at other end.
As thou art all, so be thou all to me,
First, midst, and last, converted one, and three;
My faith, my hope, my love; and in this state
My judge, my witness, and my advocate.
Where have I been this while exil'd from thee?
And whither rap'd, now thou but stoop'st to me?
Dwell, dwell here still. O, being everywhere,
How can I doubt to find thee ever here?
I know my state, both full of shame and scorn,
Conceiv'd in sin, and unto labour borne,<...

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.
Silence and strength, these two at least are good.
He gave me sun and stars and ought He could,
But not a woman's love; for that is hers.

He sealed her heart from sage and questioner--
Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave.
And if she give it to a drunken slave,
The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.

Only this much: if one, deserving well,
Touching your thin young hands and making suit,
Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute,
Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;

Prophet and poet be he over sod,
Prince among angels in the highest place,
God help me, I will smite him on the face,
Before the glory of the face of God.

Lament who will, in fruitless tears,
The speed with which our moments fly;
I sigh not over vanished years,
But watch the years that hasten by.

Look, how they come, a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.

What! grieve that time has brought so soon
The sober age of manhood on!
As idly might I weep, at noon,
To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
In prospect like Elysian isles;
And let the cheerful future go,
With all her promises and smiles?

The future! cruel were the power
Whose doom would tear thee from my heart.
Thou sweetener of the present hour!
We cannot, no, we will not part.

Oh, leave me, still,...

That there's a God we all do know,
But what God is we cannot show.

Still to our gains our chief respect is had;
Reward it is that makes us good or bad.

I sit by the fire in the gloaming,
    In the depths of my easy chair,
And I ponder, as old men ponder,
    Over times and things that were.

And outside is the gusty rushing,
    Of the fierce November blast,
With the snow drift waltzing and whirling,
    And eddying swiftly past,

It's a wild night to be abroad in,
    When the ice blast and snow drift meet
To wreath round all the world of winter
    A shroud and a winding sheet.

There's a dash of hail at the window,
    Thick with driving snow is the air;
But I sit here in ease and comfort
    In the depths of my easy chair.

I have fought my way in life's battle,
    And won Fortune's fickle caress;
Won from fame just a passing notice,
    And enjoy what is called succes...

S' il dissi mai, ch' i' venga in odio a quella.

HE VEHEMENTLY REBUTS THE CHARGE OF LOVING ANOTHER.


    Perdie! I said it not,
Nor never thought to do:
As well as I, ye wot
I have no power thereto.
And if I did, the lot
That first did me enchain
May never slake the knot,
But strait it to my pain.

And if I did, each thing
That may do harm or woe,
Continually may wring
My heart, where so I go!
Report may always ring
Of shame on me for aye,
If in my heart did spring
The words that you do say.

And if I did, each star
That is in heaven above,
May frown on me, to mar
The hope I have in love!
And if I did, such war
As they brought unto Troy,
Bring all my life afar
From all his lust and j...

In vain our labours are whatsoe'er they be,
Unless God gives the benedicite.