Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou between, thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.

It knows it all, it knows it all,
The world of groans and laughter,
It sneers of pride before a fall,
But the bitter pride comes after:
So leave me and I’ll seek you not,
So seek me and you’ll find me,
But till I know your hand-grip’s true
I’ll stand with hands behind me.

It knows it all, it knows it all,
The world of lies and sorrow,
It prates of pride before a fall,
And of the humble morrow;
But shame and blame are but a name,
Oh, heart that’s hurt past curing!
We’ll drink to-night the sinner’s pride,
The pride that’s most enduring.

They know it all, they know it all,
The curs that pass the sentence.
They preach of pride before a fall
And bitter black repentance:
So leave me when my star is set,
I’ll glory that you leave ...

We have not seen the sun for many days,
But now through East-wind haze
He makes a shift
To send a luminous drift,
To which, as to his full unclouded splendour,
The meek, contented earth makes glad surrender.
God bless the simple earth
That gave me birth!
God bless her that she looks so pleased,
The soul thai is diseased
With this world's sorrow,
Well, sir? ought to look?
Beyond, and yet beyond: not in this narrow nook of His creation
Will God make up His book.
The whole is one great scheme of compensation
The net result
Is all . . . I too have had my dream,
As from my nonage dedicate a meustgx
Of that great cult.
I saw Lord Love upon his galley pass
Westward from Cyprus; smooth as glass
The sea was all before him. He, as keleustgx

You bear a flower in your hand,
You softly take it through the air,
Lest it should be too roughly fanned,
And break and fall, for all your care.

Love is like that, the lightest breath
Shakes all its blossoms o'er the land,
And its mysterious cousin, Death,
Waits but to snatch it from your hand.

O some day, should your hand forget,
Your guardian eyes stray otherwhere,
Your cheeks shall all in vain be wet,
Vain all your penance and your prayer.

God gave you once this creature fair,
You two mysteriously met;
By Time's strange stream
There stood this Dream,
This lovely Immortality
Given your mortal eyes to see,
That might have been your darling yet;
But in the place
Of her strange face
Sorrow will stand forever more,

The stars cleave the sky.
    Yet for us they rest,
And their race-course high
    Is a shining nest!

The hours hurry on.
    But where is thy flight,
Soft pavilion
    Of motionless night?

Earth gives up her trees
    To the holy air;
They live in the breeze;
    They are saints at prayer!

Summer night, come from God,
    On your beauty, I see,
A still wave has flowed
    Of eternity!

He wor a poor hard workin lad,
An shoo a workin lass,
An hard they tew'd throo day to day,
For varry little brass.
An oft they tawk'd o'th' weddin day,
An lang'd for th' happy time,
When poverty noa moor should part,
Two lovers i' ther prime.

But wark wor scarce, an wages low,
An mait an drink wor dear,
They did ther best to struggle on,
As year crept after year.
But they wor little better off,
Nor what they'd been befoor;
It tuk 'em all ther time to keep
Grim Want aghtside o'th' door.

Soa things went on, wol Hope at last,
Gave place to dark despair;
They felt they'd nowt but lovin hearts,
An want an toil to share.
At length he screw'd his courage up
To leeav his native shore;
An goa where wealth wor worshipped less,

With sordid floods the wintry Urn
Hath stain'd fair Richmond's level green:
Her naked hill the Dryads mourn,
No longer a poetic scene.
No longer there thy raptur'd eye
The beauteous forms of earth or sky
Surveys as in their Author's mind:
And London shelters from the year
Those whom thy social hours to share
The Attic Muse design'd.
From Hampstead's airy summit me
Her guest the city shall behold,
What day the people's stern decree
To unbelieving kings is told,
When common men (the dread of fame)
Adjudg'd as one of evil name,
Before the sun, the anointed head.
Then seek thou too the pious town,
With no unworthy cares to crown
That evening's awful shade.
Deem not I call thee to deplore
The sacred martyr of the day,
By fast and penit...

A wonderful Way is The King's High Way;
It runs through the Nightlands up to the Day;
From the wonderful WAS, by the wonderful IS,
To the still more wonderful IS TO BE,--
                Runs The King's High Way.

Through the crooked by-ways of history,
Through the times that were dark with mystery,
From the cities of man's captivity,
By the shed of The Child's nativity,
And over the hill by the crosses three,
By the sign-post of God's paternity,
From Yesterday into Eternity,--
                Runs The King's High Way.
And wayfaring men, who have strayed, still say
It is good to travel The King's High Way.

Through the dim, dark Valley of Death, at times,
To the peak of the Shining Mount it climbs,
While wonders, and glories, and joys untold

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

(1803)
See "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON



In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
A harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he'd flown there
To his comely wife alone there,
While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
In these campaigning years.

'Twas time...

    Reach your hand to me, my friend,
        With its heartiest caress -
    Sometime there will come an end
        To its present faithfulness -
    Sometime I may ask in vain
    For the touch of it again,
    When between us land or sea
    Holds it ever back from me.

    Sometime I may need it so,
        Groping somewhere in the night,
    It will seem to me as though
        Just a touch, however light,
    Would make all the darkness day,
    And along some sunny way
    Lead me through an April-shower
    Of my tears to this fair hour.

    O the present is too sweet
        To go on forever thus!
    Round the corner of the street
        Who can say what waits for us? -
    Meeting - greeting, night and day,
    ...

Lady! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,
Among the Favoured, favoured not the least)
Left, 'mid the Records of this Book inscribed,
Deliberate traces, registers of thought
And feeling, suited to the place and time
That gave them birth: months passed, and still this hand,
That had not been too timid to imprint
Words which the virtues of thy Lord inspired,
Was yet not bold enough to write of Thee.
And why that scrupulous reserve? In sooth
The blameless cause lay in the Theme itself.
Flowers are there many that delight to strive
With the sharp wind, and seem to court the shower,
Yet are by nature careless of the sun
Whether he shine on them or not; and some,
Where'er he moves along the unclouded sky,
Turn a broad front full on his flattering beams:
Others do ra...

Yes, thou shalt smile again! - Time always heals
    In youth, the wounds of Sorrow. - O! survey
    Yon now subsided Deep, thro' Night a prey
    To warring Winds, and to their furious peals
Surging tumultuous! - yet, as in dismay,
    The settling Billows tremble. - Morning steals
    Grey on the rocks; - and soon, to pour the day
    From the streak'd east, the radiant Orb unveils
In all his pride of light. - Thus shall the glow
    Of beauty, health, and hope, by soft degrees
    Spread o'er thy breast; disperse these storms of woe;
Wake, with sweet pleasure's sense, the wish to please,
    Till from those eyes the wonted lustres flow,
    Bright as the Sun on calm'd and crystal Seas.

Soft and holy Vesper Hour -
    Precursor of the night -
How I love thy soothing power,
    The hush, the fading light;
Raising those vain thoughts of ours
    To higher, holier things -
Mingling gleams from Eden's bowers
    With earth's imaginings!

How thrilling in some grand old fane
    To hear the Vesper prayer
Rise, with the organ's solemn strain,
    On incense-laden air;
While the last dying smiles of day
    Athwart the stained glass pour -
Flooding with red and golden ray
    The shrine and chancel floor.

Who, at such moment, has not felt
    Those yearnings, vague, yet sweet,
For Heaven's joys at last to melt,
    Into fruition meet;
And wished, as with rapt soul he viewed
    That glorious Home above,
That ...

Kloster Kedar, Ephrata, Pennsylvania (1738)

Sister Maria Christina sings:


Wake, sisters, wake! the day-star shines;
Above Ephrata's eastern pines
The dawn is breaking, cool and calm.
Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm!

Praised be the Lord for shade and light,
For toil by day, for rest by night!
Praised be His name who deigns to bless
Our Kedar of the wilderness!

Our refuge when the spoiler's hand
Was heavy on our native land;
And freedom, to her children due,
The wolf and vulture only knew.

We praised Him when to prison led,
We owned Him when the stake blazed red;
We knew, whatever might befall,
His love and power were over all.

He heard our prayers; with outstretched arm
He led us for...

A piè de' colli ove la bella vesta.

HE FEIGNS AN ADDRESS FROM SOME BIRDS WHICH HE HAD PRESENTED.


    Beneath the verdant hills--where the fair vest
Of earthly mould first took the Lady dear,
Who him that sends us, feather'd captives, here
Awakens often from his tearful rest--
Lived we in freedom and in quiet, blest
With everything which life below might cheer,
No foe suspecting, harass'd by no fear
That aught our wanderings ever could molest;
But snatch'd from that serener life, and thrown
To the low wretched state we here endure,
One comfort, short of death, survives alone:
Vengeance upon our captor full and sure!
Who, slave himself at others' power, remains
Pent in worse prison, bound by sterner chains.

MACGREGOR.

I. NOONDAY.

Two angry men - in heat they sever,
    And one goes home by a harvest field: -
"Hope's nought," quoth he, "and vain endeavor;
    I said and say it, I will not yield!

"As for this wrong, no art can mend it,
    The bond is shiver'd that held us twain;
Old friends we be, but law must end it,
    Whether for loss or whether for gain.

"Yon stream is small - full slow its wending;
    But winning is sweet, but right is fine;
And shoal of trout, or willowy bending -
    Though Law be costly - I'll prove them mine.

"His strawberry cow slipped loose her tether,
    And trod the best of my barley down;
His little lasses at play together
    Pluck'd the poppies my boys had grown.

"What then? - Why naught! She lack'...

Them sudden flight had scatter'd over the plain,
Turn'd tow'rds the mountain, whither reason's voice
Drives us; I to my faithful company
Adhering, left it not. For how of him
Depriv'd, might I have sped, or who beside
Would o'er the mountainous tract have led my steps
He with the bitter pang of self-remorse
Seem'd smitten. O clear conscience and upright
How doth a little fling wound thee sore!

Soon as his feet desisted (slack'ning pace),
From haste, that mars all decency of act,
My mind, that in itself before was wrapt,
Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor'd:
And full against the steep ascent I set
My face, where highest to heav'n its top o'erflows.

The sun, that flar'd behind, with ruddy beam
Before my form was broken; for in me
His rays...