“Our loss was light,” the paper said,
“Compared with damage to the Hun”:
She was a widow, and she read
One name upon the list of dead
Her son, her only son.

"All ready?" cried the captain;
"Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
"Heave up the worthless lubbers,
The dying and the dead."
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust
"Now let the sharks look to it,
Toss up the dead ones first!"
Corpse after corpse came.up,
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over?"
Growled through that matted lip;
"The blind ones are no better,
Let's lighten the good ship."
Hark! from the shi...

On my wall hangs a Japanese carving,
The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer.
Sympathetically I observe
The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating
What a strain it is to be evil.

When the last colours of the day
Have from their burning ebbed away,
About that ruin, cold and lone,
The cricket shrills from stone to stone;
And scattering o'er its darkened green,
Bands of the fairies may be seen,
Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet
Dancing a thistledown dance round it:
While the great gold of the mild moon
Tinges their tiny acorn shoon.

There, in that bed so closely curtain'd round,
Worn to a shade, and wan with slow decay,
A father sleeps! Oh hush'd be every sound!
Soft may we breathe the midnight hours away!

    He stirs--yet still he sleeps. May heavenly dreams
Long o'er his smooth and settled pillow rise;
Till thro' the shutter'd pane the morning streams,
And on the hearth the glimmering rush-light dies.

I am of the wind...
A wisp of the battering wind...

I trail my fingers along the Alps
And an avalanche falls in my wake...
I feel in my quivering length
When it buries the hamlet beneath...

I hurriedly sweep aside
The cities that clutter our path...
As we whirl about the circle of the globe...
As we tear at the pillars of the world...
Open to the wind,
The Destroyer!
The wind that is battering at your gates.

Strange is the song, and the soul that is singing
Falters because of the vision it sees;
Voice that is not of the living is ringing
Down in the depths where the darkness is clinging,
Even when Noon is the lord of the leas,
Fast, like a curse, to the ghosts of the trees!

Here in a mist that is parted in sunder,
Half with the darkness and half with the day;
Face of a woman, but face of a wonder,
Vivid and wild as a flame of the thunder,
Flashes and fades, and the wail of the grey
Water is loud on the straits of the bay!

Father, whose years have been many and weary
Elder, whose life is as lovely as light
Shining in ways that are sterile and dreary
Tell me the name of this beautiful peri,
Flashing on me like the wonderful white
Star, at the meetin...

My soul lives in my body's house,
And you have both the house and her,
But sometimes she is less your own
Than a wild, gay adventurer;
A restless and an eager wraith,
How can I tell what she will do,
Oh, I am sure of my body's faith,
But what if my soul broke faith with you?

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Above their heads the legions pressing on:
(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
And died not knowing how the day had gone.)

O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
Then let your mighty chorus witness be
To them, and Caesar, that we still make war.

Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
That we will onward till we win or fall,
That we will keep the faith for which they died.

Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
And in content may turn them to their sleep.

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.

The intoxicating laughter that fills his prison
with the absurd and the strange, swamps his reason.
Doubt surrounds him, and ridiculous fear,
hideous and multiform, circles near.

That genius pent up in a foul sty,
those spectres, those grimaces, the cries,
whirling, in a swarm, about his hair,

that dreamer, whom his lodging’s terrors bare,
such are your emblems, Soul, singer of songs obscure,
whom Reality suffocates behind four walls!

St. Regimund, e'er he became a saint,
Was much imbued with vulgar earthly taint;
E'er he renounced the honors of a Knight
And doffed his coat of mail and helmet bright,
For sober cassock and monastic hood,
Leaving the castle for the cloister rude,
And changed the banquet's sumptuous repast
For frugal crusts and the ascetic fast;
Forsook his charger and equipments for
The crucifix and sacerdotal war;
While yet with valiant sword and blazoned shield
He braved the dangers of the martial field,
Or sought the antlered trophies of the chase
In forest and sequestered hunting place;
Or, tiring of the hunt's exciting sport,
Enjoyed the idle pleasures of the court,
Whiling away the time with games of chance,
With music and the more voluptuous dance,
The hollow...

They are gone: all is still: Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?
Nothing moves on the lawn but the quick lilac shade.
Far up gleams the house, and beneath flows the river.
Here lean, my head, on this cool balustrade.

Ere he come: ere the boat, by the shining-branch’d border
Of dark elms come round, dropping down the proud stream;
Let me pause, let me strive, in myself find some order,
Ere their boat-music sound, ere their broider’d flags gleam.

Is it hope makes me linger? the dim thought, that sorrow
Means parting? that only in absence lies pain?
It was well with me once if I saw him: to-morrow
May bring one of the old happy moments again.

Last night we stood earnestly talking together
She enter’d, that moment his eyes turn’d from me.
Fasten’d on her dark...

    In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
    I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer;
    Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
    And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.
    The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,
    And I alone a weary vigil keep;
    In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry,
    And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek.

    And somehow the embers' glow brings me back the long ago,
    The days of merry laughter and light song;
    When I sped the hours away with the gayest of the gay
    In the giddy whirl of fashion's festal throng.
    Oh, I ran a grilling race and I little recked the pace,
    For the lust of youth ran riot in my blood;
    But at l...

Long had she knelt at the Madonna's shrine,
With the empty chapel, cold and grey,
Telling her beads, while grief with marring line
And bitter tear stole all her youth away.

Outcast was she from what Life holdeth dear;
Banished from joy that other souls might win;
And from the dark beyond she turned with fear,
Being so branded by the mark of sin.

Yet when at last she raised her troubled face,
Haunted by sorrow, whitened by alarms,
Mary leaned down from out the pictured place,
And laid the little Christ within her arms.

Rosy and warm she held Him to her heart,
She - the abandoned one - the thing apart.

        "We are told that the bigots are growing old and fast wearing out. If it be so why not let us die in peace?"
        --LORD BEXLEY'S Letter to the Freeholders of Kent.


Stop, Intellect, in mercy stop,
    Ye curst improvements, cease;
And let poor Nick Vansittart drop
    Into his grave in peace.

Hide, Knowledge, hide thy rising sun,
    Young Freedom, veil thy head;
Let nothing good be thought or done,
    Till Nick Vansittart's dead!

Take pity on a dotard's fears,
    Who much doth light detest;
And let his last few drivelling years
    Be dark as were the rest.

You too, ye fleeting one-pound notes,
    Speed not so fast away--
Ye rags on which old Nicky gloats,
    A few months longer stay.

Togethe...

    My heart was like a bird and took to flight,
        Around the rigging circling joyously;
        The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky
    Like a great angel drunken with the light.

    "What is yon isle, sad and funereal?"
        "Cythera famed in deathless song," said they,
        "The gay old bachelors' Eldorado-Nay,
    Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"

    Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!
        The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills
        Scentlike above thy level seas and fills
    Our souls with languor and all amorous things.

    Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers
        Held holy by all men for evermore,
        Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore
    Float like rose-incense...

Julia, if I chance to die
Ere I print my poetry,
I most humbly thee desire
To commit it to the fire:
Better 'twere my book were dead,
Than to live not perfected.

(To M. E. H.)


When you wake in your crib,
You, an inch of experience,
Vaulted about
With the wonder of darkness;
Wailing and striving
To reach from your feebleness
Something you feel
Will be good to and cherish you,
Something you know
And can rest upon blindly:
O then a hand
(Your mother's, your mother's!)
By the fall of its fingers
All knowledge, all power to you,
Out of the dreary,
Discouraging strangenesses
Comes to and masters you,
Takes you, and lovingly
Woos you and soothes you
Back, as you cling to it,
Back to some comforting
Corner of sleep.

So you wake in your bed,
Having lived, having loved:
But the shadows are there,
And the world and its kingdoms
Incredibly faded;
And you...