A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed
Through stress of season and coil of cloud,
Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear
Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud,
Dead on the breast of the dying year,
Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear
For love of the suns long set, for love
Of song that sets not with sunset here,
For love of the fervent heart, above
Their sense who saw not the swift light move
That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre
The thoughts that passion was fain to prove
In fervent labour of high desire
And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre
Alive and strong as the sun, and caught
From darkness light, and from twilight fire.
Passion, deep as the depths unsought
Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought,
...

The sky is dark and the hills are white
As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night,
And this is the song the storm-king sings,
As over the world his cloak he flings:
"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;"
He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:
"Sleep, little one, sleep."

On yonder mountain-side a vine
Clings at the foot of a mother pine;
The tree bends over the trembling thing,
And only the vine can hear her sing:
"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
What shall you fear when I am here?
Sleep, little one, sleep."

The king may sing in his bitter flight,
The tree may croon to the vine to-night,
But the little snowflake at my breast
Liketh the song I sing the best,--
Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
Weary thou art, anext my heart<...

A dog shrieks in misery from a bridge
To heaven... which stands like old gray stone
Upon far-off houses.    And, like a rope
Made of tar, a dead river lies on the snow.
Three trees, black frozen flames, make threats
At the end of the earth.    They pierce
With sharp knives the rough air,
In which a scrap of bird hangs all alone.
A few street lights wade towards the city,
Extinguished candles for a corpse.    And a smear
Of people shrinks together and is soon
Drowned in the wretched white swamp.

O Cruel fair,
Whose flowing hair
The envy and the pride of all is,
As onward roll
The years, that poll
Will get as bald as a billiard ball is;
Then shall your skin, now pink and dimply,
Be tanned to parchment, sear and pimply!

When you behold
Yourself grown old,
These words shall speak your spirits moody:
"Unhappy one!
What heaps of fun
I've missed by being goody-goody!
Oh, that I might have felt the hunger
Of loveless age when I was younger!"

The rose-tints have faded from out of the West,
From the Mountain's high peak, from the river's broad breast.
And, silently shadowing valley and rill,
The twilight steals noiselessly over the hill.
Behold, in the blue depths of ether afar,
Now softly emerging each glittering star;
While, later, the moon, placid, solemn and bright,
Floods earth with her tremulous, silvery light.

Hush! list to the Whip-poor-will's soft plaintive notes,
As up from the valley the lonely sound floats,
Inhale the sweet breath of yon shadowy wood
And the wild flowers blooming in hushed solitude.
Start not at the whispering, 'tis but the breeze,
Low rustling, 'mid maple and lonely pine trees,
Or willows and alders that fringe the dark tide
Where canoes of the red men oft silently gli...

The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,
Winding about their dimness the mist's grey cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass
To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes
That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

Thou rear'st thy beauteous head, sweet flow'r
Gemm'd by the soft and vernal show'r;
Its drops still round thee shine:
The florist views thee with delight;
And, if so precious in his sight,
Oh! what art thou in mine?

For she, who nurs'd thy drooping form
When Winter pour'd her snowy storm,
Has oft consol'd me too;
For me a fost'ring tear has shed, -
She has reviv'd my drooping head,
And bade me bloom anew.

When adverse Fortune bade us part,
And grief depress'd my aching heart,
Like yon reviving ray,
She from behind the cloud would move,
And with a stolen look of love
Would melt my cares away.

Sweet flow'r! supremely dear to me,
Thy lovely mistress blooms in thee,
For, tho' the garden's pride,
In beauty's ...

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air
While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;...
And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge...
Then send the priests to every hearth and home
To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw
The frozen tears...
If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The le...

I bend o'er the wheel at my sewing;
I'm spent; and I'm hungry for rest;
No curse on the master bestowing,--
No hell-fires within me are glowing,--
Tho' pain flares its fires in my breast.

I mar the new cloth with my weeping,
And struggle to hold back the tears;
A fever comes over me, sweeping
My veins; and all through me goes creeping
A host of black terrors and fears.

The wounds of the old years ache newly;
The gloom of the shop hems me in;
But six o'clock signals come duly:
O, freedom seems mine again, truly...
Unhindered I haste from the din.

Now home again, ailing and shaking,
With tears that are blinding my eyes,
With bones that are creaking and breaking,
Unjoyful of rest... merely taking
A seat; hoping never to rise.

An Ode on a Lost Volume of my Poems Which He Desired Me to Replace that He Might Add Them to My Other Works Deposited in the Library.

Strophe I

My two-fold Book! single in show
But double in Contents,
Neat, but not curiously adorn'd
Which in his early youth,
A poet gave, no lofty one in truth
Although an earnest wooer of the Muse
Say, while in cool Ausonian shades
Or British wilds he roam'd,
Striking by turns his native lyre,
By turns the Daunian lute
And stepp'd almost in air,

Antistrophe

Say, little book, what furtive hand
Thee from thy fellow books convey'd,
What time, at the repeated suit
Of my most learned Friend,
I sent thee forth an honour'd traveller
From our great city to the source of Thames,
Caerulean sire...

    I made my bed beneath the pines
    Where the sea washed the sandy bars;
    I heard the music of the winds,
    And blest the aureate face of Mars.
    All night a lilac splendor throve
    Above the heaven's shadowy verge;
    And in my heart the voice of love
    Kept music with the dreaming surge.

    A little maid was at my side,
    She slept, I scarcely slept at all;
    Until toward the morning-tide
    A dream possessed me with its thrall.
    She sweetly breathed; around my breast
    I felt her warmth like drowsy bliss,
    Then came the vision of unrest,
    I saw your face and felt your kiss.

    I woke and knew with what dismay
    She read my secret and surprise;
    She only said, "Again 'tis day!
    How red your...

The glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping,
    Goes trembling past me up the College wall.
Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping,
    The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall.

Beyond the leaves that overhang the street,
    Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white,
Passes the world with shadows at their feet
    Going left and right.

Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough,
    See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a coin,
I sit absolved, assured I am better off
    Beyond a world I never want to join.

The children awoke in their dreaming
    While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
    To the heart-light of the hill.

Its sounds and sights were forsaking
    The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
    Out from the heart-light deep.

It ran where the rill in its flowing
    Under the star-light gay
With wonderful colour was glowing
    Like the bubbles they blew in their play.

From the misty mountain under
    Shot gleams of an opal star:
Its pathways of rainbow wonder
    Rayed to their feet from afar.

From their feet as they strayed in the meadow
    It led through caverned aisles,
Filled with purple and green light and shadow
    For mystic miles on miles.
<...

No door has my house,

No house has my door;
And in and out ever

I carry my store.

No grate has my kitchen,

No kitchen my grate;
Yet roasts it and boils it

Both early and late.

My bed has no trestles,

My trestles no bed;
Yet merrier moments

No mortal e'er led.

My cellar is lofty,

My barn is full deep,
From top to the bottom,

There lie I and sleep.

And soon as I waken,

All moves on its race;
My place has no fixture,

My fixture no place.

Let the dream go. Are there not other dreams
    In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight
That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams,
    And shoot the shadows through and through with light?
    What matters one lost vision of the night?
    Let the dream go!

Let the hope set. Are there not other hopes
    That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky?
Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes
    Before some light is lent it from on high;
    What folly to think happiness gone by!
    Let the hope set!

Let the joy fade. Are there not other joys,
    Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom?
Severe must be the winter that destroys
    The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb.
    What cares the earth for her brief time of gloo...

Some poets sing o' gipsy queens,
An some o' ladies fine;
Aw'll sing a song o' other scenes, -
A humbler muse is mine.
Jewels, an' gold, an silken frills,
Are things too heigh for me;
But wol mi harp wi vigour thrills,
Aw'll strike a chord for thee.

Poor lassie wan,
Do th' best tha can,
Although thi fate be hard.
A time ther'll be
When sich as thee
Shall have yor full reward.

At hauf-past five tha leaves thi bed,
An off tha goes to wark;
An gropes thi way to mill or shed,
Six months o'th' year i'th' dark.
Tha gets but little for thi pains,
But that's noa fault o' thine;
Thi maister reckons up his gains,
An ligs i bed till nine.

Poor lassie wan, &c.

He's little childer ov his own
'At's qu...

(Killed at Surrey C. H., October, 1866.)



.    .    .    .    .

Dear friend, forgive a wild lament
Insanely following thy flight.
I would not cumber thine ascent
Nor drag thee back into the night;

But the great sea-winds sigh with me,
The fair-faced stars seem wrinkled, old,
And I would that I might lie with thee
There in the grave so cold, so cold!

Grave walls are thick, I cannot see thee,
And the round skies are far and steep;
A-wild to quaff some cup of Lethe,
Pain is proud and scorns to weep.

My heart breaks if it cling about thee,
And still breaks, if far from thine.
O drear, drear death, to live without thee,
O sad life - to keep thee mine.

When people tell me they have loved
    But once in youth,
I wonder, are they always moved
    To speak the truth?

Not that they wilfully deceive:
    They fondly cherish
A constancy which they would grieve
    To think might perish.

They cherish it until they think
    'Twas always theirs.
So, if the truth they sometimes blink,
    'Tis unawares.

Yet unawares, I must profess,
    They do deceive
Themselves, and those who questionless
    Their tale believe.

For I have loved, I freely own,
    A score of times,
And woven, out of love alone,
    A hundred rhymes.

Boys will be fickle.    Yet, when all
    Is said and done,
I was not one whom you could call
    A flirt--not one

Of those w...