I think it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Fieldfares, bonny fieldfares, feedin' 'mang the bent,
Wheer the sun is shinin' through yon cloud's wide rent,
            Welcoom back to t' moorlands,
            Frae Norway's fells an' shorelands,
Welcoom back to Whardill,(1) now October's ommost spent.

Noisy, chackin' fieldfares, weel I ken your cry,
When i' flocks you're sweepin' ower the hills sae high:
            Oft on trees you gethers,
            Preenin' out your feathers,
An' I'm fain to see your coats as blue as t' summer sky.

Curlews, larks an' tewits,(2) all have gone frae t' moors,
Frost has nipped i' t' garden all my bonny floors;
            Roses, lilies, pansies,
            Stocks an' yallow tansies
Fade away, an' soon the leaves 'll clutter(3) doon i'    shoors.

Here i' bed...

 Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun. 

In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,

We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.

By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
'Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.

And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.

Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I'd lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor ...

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills.
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.

It's a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine,
Apple orchards blossom there, and the air's like wine.
There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at rest,
And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest.

"Will ye not come home brother? ye have been long away,
It's April, and blossom time, and white is the may;
And bright is the sun brother, and warm is the rain,
Will ye not come home, brother, home to us again?

"The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run.
It's blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun...

The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,
The valley brooks they roar aloud,
Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The first wood down is sere and small,
From the hills--the brishings off the hills;
And then come by the bats and all
We cut last year in the hills;
And then the roots we tried to cleave
But found too tough and had to leave,
Polting down the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!

The eye shall look, the ear shall hark
To the hills, the doings in the hills!
And rivers mating in the dark
With tokens from the hills.
Now what is weak will surely go,
An...

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1864.)


Like flowers sequestered from the sun
    And wind of summer, day by day
I dwindled paler, whilst my hair
    Showed the first tinge of grey.

'Oh what is life, that we should live?
    Or what is death, that we must die?
A bursting bubble is our life:
    I also, what am I?'

'What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,
    That I may grieve,' my sister said;
And stayed a white embroidering hand
    And raised a golden head:

Her tresses showed a richer mass,
    Her eyes looked softer than my own,
Her figure had a statelier height,
    Her voice a tenderer tone.

'Some must be second and not first;
    All cannot be the first of all:
Is not this, too, but vanity?
    I...

'Neath the radiance faint of the starlit sky
The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high;
O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white,
The branches glittered with crystal bright;
But the winter wind's keen icy breath
Was merciless, numbing and chill as death.

It clamored around a handsome pile -
Abode of modern wealth and style
Where smiling guests had gathered to greet
Its master's birth-day with welcome meet;
And clink of glasses and loud gay tone,
With song and jest, drowned the wind's wild moan.

Yet, farther on, another abode
Its pillared portico proudly showed.
From its windows high flowed streams of light,
Mingling with outside shadows of night;
And the strains of music rapid, gay -
Told well how within sped the hours away.

Ste...

I tread the paths of earlier times
Where all my steps were set to rhymes.

I gaze on scenes I used to see
When dreaming of a vague To be.

I walk in ways made bright of old
By hopes youth-limned in hues of gold.

But lo! those hopes of future bliss
Seem dull beside the joy that IS.

My noonday skies are far more bright
Than those dreamed of in morning's light,

And life gives me more joys to hold
Than all it promised me of old.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life will be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last, far off, at last to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but who am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language, but a cry.

O all you little blackey tops,
Pray don't you eat my father's crops,
While I lie down to take a nap.
Shua O! Shua O!

If father he perchance should come,
With his cocked hat and his long gun,
Then you must fly and I must run.
Shua O! Shua O!

    A mossy footfall in this wood
        A peal of thunder were,
    Or autumn tempest-shriek, compared
        With the unwhispered stir
    Of massy fluids lift in air,
    To build these leafy pillars fair.

    Lavished at wordless wish or mute
        Command, the chemic wealth
    Upsprings to meet the builders' hands,
        All hushed as dusky stealth.
    Noiseless as love, as silent prayer
    Mysterious, the builders are.


    Ah, sure, these silences are works
        Of God's sabbatic rest,
    A music perfect as the calm
        Of wave's unbroken crest!
    These woven leaves that stilly nod,
    These violets, ope their eyes on God.

    The deep serene that worketh here
        Works, too, 'mid human tears...

In forest shade my couch is made.
    And there I calmly lie,
With thought confined in pensive mind,
    And contemplate the sky;
I wonder if the frowning cliff,
    The valley and the wood,
Or rugged freaks of mountain peaks,
    Enjoy their solitude.

The heavens hold a sphere of gold,
    A full and placid moon,
Suspended high, in cloudless sky,
    With constellations strewn;
Its mellow beam, on rill and stream,
    In silvery sheen I see;
Before its light, the shades of night
    As evil spirits, flee.

In space afar, a shooting star,
    With swift, uncertain course,
In dazzling sparks its passage marks,
    As it expends its force;
The mountains bare reflect its glare
    Of weird, unearthly light,
And e'en the sk...

Though clock,
To tell how night draws hence, I've none,
A cock
I have to sing how day draws on:
I have
A maid, my Prue, by good luck sent,
To save
That little, Fates me gave or lent.
A hen
I keep, which, creeking day by day,
Tells when
She goes her long white egg to lay:
A goose
I have, which, with a jealous ear,
Lets loose
Her tongue, to tell what danger's near.
A lamb
I keep, tame, with my morsels fed,
Whose dam
An orphan left him, lately dead:
A cat
I keep, that plays about my house,
Grown fat
With eating many a miching mouse:
To these
A Trasy I do keep, whereby
I please
The more my rural privacy:
Which are
But toys, to give my heart some ease:
Where care
None is, slight things do li...

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: "The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

"Look where we will o'er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

"Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

"This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older."

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

I love to see the swallows come
    At my window twittering,
Bringing from their southern home
    News of the approaching spring.
'Last year's nest,' they softly say,
    'Last year's love again shall see;
Only faithful lovers may
    Tell you of the coming glee.'

When the first fell touch of frost
    Strips the wood of faded leaves,
Calling all their winged host,
    The swallows meet above the eaves
'Come away, away,' they cry,
    'Winter's snow is hastening;
True hearts winter comes not nigh,
    They are ever in the spring.'

If by some unhappy fate,
    Victim of a cruel mind,
One is parted from her mate
    And within a cage confined,
Swiftly will the swallow die,
    Pining for her lover's bower,
And her lover...

Which it is not my style
To produce needless pain
By statements that rile
Or that go ’gin the grain,
But here’s Captain Jack still a-livin’, and Nye has no skelp on his brain!

On that Caucasian head
There is no crown of hair;
It has gone, it has fled!
And Echo sez “Where?”
And I asks, “Is this Nation a White Man’s, and is generally things on the square?”

She was known in the camp
As “Nye’s other squaw,”
And folks of that stamp
Hez no rights in the law,
But is treacherous, sinful, and slimy, as Nye might hev well known before.

But she said that she knew
Where the Injins was hid,
And the statement was true,
For it seemed that she did,
Since she led William where he was covered by seventeen Modocs, and slid!

Then they r...

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how sh...

(Ob. October 30, 1897)

He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint,
Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,
And old-world whiskers.    You found him cynic, saint,
Salt, humourist, Christian, poet; with a free,
Far-glancing, luminous utterance; and a heart
Large as ST. FRANCIS'S: withal a brain
Stored with experience, letters, fancy, art,
And scored with runes of human joy and pain.
Till six-and-sixty years he used his gift,
His gift unparalleled, of laughter and tears,
And left the world a high-piled, golden drift
Of verse: to grow more golden with the years,
Till the Great Silence fallen upon his ways
Break into song, and he that had Love have Praise.