Light words they were, and lightly, falsely said:
She heard them, and she started, and she rose,
As in the act to speak; the sudden thought
And unconsidered impulse led her on.
In act to speak she rose, but with the sense
Of all the eyes of that mixed company
Now suddenly turned upon her, some with age
Hardened and dulled, some cold and critical;
Some in whom vapours of their own conceit,
As moist malarious mists the heavenly stars,
Still blotted out their good, the best at best
By frivolous laugh and prate conventional
All too untuned for all she thought to say
With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek
Flushed-up, and o’er-flushed itself, blank night her soul
Made dark, and in her all her purpose swooned.
She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon
W...

I am that creature and creator who
Loosens and reins the waters of the sea,
Forming the rocky marge anon anew.
I stir the cold breasts of antiquity,
And in the soft stone of the pyramid
Move wormlike; and I flutter all those sands
Whereunder lost and soundless time is hid.
I shape the hills and valleys with these hands,
And darken forests on their naked sides,
And call the rivers from the vexing springs,
And lead the blind winds into deserts strange.
And in firm human bones the ill that hides
Is mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings.
I am that creature and creator, Change.

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

Cloudy argosies are drifting down into the purple dark,
And the long low amber reaches, lying on the horizon's mark,
Shape themselves into the gateways, dim and wonderful unfurled,
Gateways leading through' the sunset, out into the underworld.

How my spirit vainly flutters, like a bird that beats the bars,
To be launched upon that ocean, with its tides of throbbing stars,
To be gone beyond the sunset, and the day's revolving zone,
Out into the primal darkness, and the world of the unknown!

Hints and guesses of its grandeur, broken shadows, sudden gleams,
Like a falling star shoot past me, quenched within a sea of dreams,--
But the unimagined glory lying in the dark beyond,
Is to these as morn to midnight, or as silence is to sound.

Sweeter than the trees of Eden...

God's said to dwell there, wheresoever He
Puts down some prints of His high Majesty;
As when to man He comes, and there doth place
His Holy Spirit, or doth plant His Grace.

Call me away; there's nothing here,
That wins my soul to stay;
Then let me leave this prospect drear,
And hasten far away.

To our beloved land I'll flee,
Our land of thought and soul,
Where I have roved so oft with thee,
Beyond the world's control.

I'll sit and watch those ancient trees,
Those Scotch firs dark and high;
I'll listen to the eerie breeze,
Among their branches sigh.

The glorious moon shines far above;
How soft her radiance falls,
On snowy heights, and rock, and grove;
And yonder palace walls!

Who stands beneath yon fir trees high?
A youth both slight and fair,
Whose bright and restless azure eye
Proclaims him known to care,
Though fair that brow, it is not smooth;
Though small those features, yet in...

Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew,--I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,--
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleete...

As the shadows of evening around me are falling,
With its dark sombre curtain outspread,
And night's just at hand, chilly night so appalling,
And day's brilliant sunshine hath fled,

It is e'en so with me, for the eve of my day
Has arrived, yet I scarcely know how;
Bright morn hath departed, and noon passed away,
And 'tis evening, pale eve with me now.

Oh! where are the friends who in life's early morn,
With me did their journey commence;
Some are estranged, while some few still remain,
And others departed long since.

And when I too, like them, shall be summoned away,
And the shadows of death on me fall,
Be thou the Great Shepherd of Israel but near,
My Saviour, my God, and my all.

And though the "dark valley" we all must pass thr...

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:
’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
A...

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as fro...

    "Deny your God!" they ringed me with their spears;
    Blood-crazed were they, and reeking from the strife;
    Hell-hot their hate, and venom-fanged their sneers,
    And one man spat on me and nursed a knife.
    And there was I, sore wounded and alone,
    I, the last living of my slaughtered band.
    Oh sinister the sky, and cold as stone!
    In one red laugh of horror reeled the land.
    And dazed and desperate I faced their spears,
    And like a flame out-leaped that naked knife,
    And like a serpent stung their bitter jeers:
    "Deny your God, and we will give you life."

    Deny my God! Oh life was very sweet!
    And it is hard in youth and hope to die;
    And there my comrades dear lay at my feet,
    And in that blear of blood soon must...

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Under the sky without a stain
The long, ripe, rippling of the grain;
Light, broadcast from the golden oats
Over the blackberry fences floats.
Madonna sits in a cedar chair
Tranquillized by the warm, still air;
One of the angels asleep on her knee
Under the shade of an apple tree.
The other angel holds a doll,
Covered warm in a tiny shawl;
The toy is supposed to be fast asleep
As the sister angel: in dimples deep
The grave, sweet charm on the baby face
Repeats the look of maturer grace
That hovers about Madonna's eyes,
One of the heavenly mysteries
From far ethereal latitudes
Where neither doubt nor trouble intrudes.
Ponder here in the orchard nest
On the truth of life made manifest:
The struggle and effort was all to prove
That the bes...

Oh! call us not silent,
The throng of the dead!
Though in visible being
No longer we tread
The pathways of earth,
From the grave and the sky,
From the halls of the Past
And the star-host on high,
We speak to the spirit
In language divine;
List, Mortal, our song,
Ere its burden be thine.

Our labor is finished,
Our race it is run;
The guerdon eternal
Is lost or is won;
A beautiful gift
Is the life thou dost share;
Bewail not its sorrow,
Despise not its care;
The rainbow of Hope
Spans the ocean of Time;
High triumph and holy
Makes conflict sublime.

Work ever! Life's moments
Are fleeting and brief;
Behind is the burden,
Before, the relief.
Work nobly! the deed
Liveth bright in the Past,

        One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm,
            A halo, like an angel's, on her hair.
        She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm.
            A holy presence hovers round her there,
            And she, for all her mother-pains more fair,
        Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stir
        The hearts of men bear worship unto her.

        Another wanders where the cold wind blows,
            Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife.
        Homeless forever, at her bosom close
            She holds the purchase of her love and life,
            Of motherhood, unglorified as wife;
        And bitterer than the world's relentless scorn
        The knowing her child were happier never born.

        Whence are t...

Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles
In the golden haze off yonder,
Where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles
And the ocean loves to wander.

Fragrant the vines that mantle those hills,
Proudly the fig rejoices,
Merrily dance the virgin rills,
Blending their myriad voices.

Our herds shall suffer no evil there,
But peacefully feed and rest them--
Never thereto shall prowling bear
Or serpent come to molest them.

Neither shall Eurus, wanton bold,
Nor feverish drought distress us,
But he that compasseth heat and cold
Shall temper them both to bless us.

There no vandal foot has trod,
And the pirate hordes that wander
Shall never profane the sacred sod
Of these beautiful isles out yonder.

Never a spell shall bli...

Who is the strong?    Not he who puts to test
His sinews with the strong and proves the best;
But he who dwells where weaklings congregate,
And never lets his splendid strength abate.

Who is the good?    Not he who walks each day
With moral men along the high, clean way;
But he who jostles gilded sin and shame,
Yet will not sell his honour or his name.

Who is the wise?    Not he who from the start
With Wisdom's followers has taken part;
But he who looks in Folly's tempting eyes,
And turns away, perceiving her disguise.

Who is serene?    Not he who flees his kind,
Some mountain fastness, or some cave to find;
But he who in the city's noisiest scene,
Keeps calm within - he only is serene.

I

    I saw a slowly-stepping train -
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II

    And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III

    The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV

    And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V

  ...