Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

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?

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
    To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother's word
    My child to banishment retires.

As disappears the moon, when wind
    Heaps miles of mist her visage o'er,
So vanisheth his face behind
    The cloud of his white pinafore.

I cannot then come near my child--
    A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled--
    I waiting, for I cannot cross.

Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
    The Isis-veil behind it brings--
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
    Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!

Mysterious moment! When or how
    Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
    When turns his being to the sun!

A light...

Her Vivien eyes, - beware! beware!
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near
As sages once in old Chaldee
Thou shouldst become a worshiper,
And they thy evil destiny.

Her Vivien eyes, - away! away!
Though they be springs, remorseless they
Gleam underneath her brow's bright day.
Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost!
Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,
Through which thy captive soul were lost,
As was young Hylas once of old.

Her Vivien eyes, - take heed! take heed!
Though they be bibles, none may read
Therein of God or Holy Creed.
Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,
As Merlin was, romances tell,
And in their sorcerous spells immersed,
Hoping for Heaven thou cha...

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

        "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...

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...

    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...

"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...

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June,
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (beside George, who drank);
The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell,
William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

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.

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...

Dearest love! when thy God shall recall thee,
Be this record inscribed on thy tomb:
Truth, and gratitude, well may applaud thee,
And all thy past virtues relume.

It shall tell--to thy sex's proud honour,
Of sufferings and trials severe,
While still, through protracted affliction,
Not a murmur escaped; but the tear

Of resignment to Heaven's high dictates,
'Twas thine, like a martyr, to shed:
That heart--all affection for others--
For thyself, uncomplainingly, bled.

Midst the storms, which misfortune had gather'd,
What an angel thou wert unto me;
In that hour, when all friendship seem'd sever'd,
Thou didst bloom like the ever-green tree!

All was gloom; and in vain had I striven,
For hope ceased a ray to impart;
When thou cam'st,...

    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...