Almighty! what is man?
But flesh and blood.
Like shadows flee his days,
He marks not how they vanish from his gaze,
Suddenly, he must die -
He droppeth, stunned, into nonentity.


Almighty! what is man?
A body frail and weak,
Full of deceit and lies,
Of vile hypocrisies.
Now like a flower blowing,
Now scorched by sunbeams glowing.
And wilt thou of his trespasses inquire?
How may he ever bear
Thine anger just, thy vengeance dire?
Punish him not, but spare,
For he is void of power and strength!


Almighty! what is man?
By filthy lust possessed,
Whirled in a round of lies,
Fond frenzy swells his breast.
The pure man sinks in mire and slime,
The noble shrinketh not from crime,
Wilt thou resent on him the charm...

Young as the Spring seemed life when she
Came from her silent East to me;
Unquiet as Autumn was my breast
When she declined into her West.

Such tender, such untroubling things
She taught me, daughter of all Springs;
Such dusty deathly lore I learned
When her last embers redly burned.

How should it hap (Love, canst thou say?)
Such end should be to so pure day?
Such shining chastity give place
To this annulling grave's disgrace?

Such hopes be quenched in this despair,
Grace chilled to granite everywhere?
How should--in vain I cry--how should
That be, alas, which only could!

Do not let any woman read this verse;
It is for men, and after them their sons
And their sons' sons.

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;
When we remember Deirdre and her tale,
And that her lips are dust.

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;.
They looked into her eyes and said their say,
And she replied to them.

More than a thousand years it is since she
Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass;
She saw the clouds.

A thousand years! The grass is still the same,
The clouds as lovely as they were that time
When Deirdre was alive.

But there has never been a woman born
Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful
Of all the women born.

Let all men go apart and mourn together;
No man can ever love...

This cool quiet of trees
In the grey dusk of the north,
In the green half-dusk of the west,
Where fires still glow;
These glimmering fantasies
Of foliage branching forth
And drooping into rest;
Ye lovers, know
That in your wanderings
Beneath this arching brake
Ye must attune your love
To hushed words.
For here is the dreaming wisdom of
The unmovable things...
And more: - walk softly, lest ye wake
A thousand sleeping birds.

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn:
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pea...

("L'Avarice et l'Envie.")

[LE CONSERVATEUR LIITÉRAIRE, 1820.]


Envy and Avarice, one summer day,
Sauntering abroad
In quest of the abode
Of some poor wretch or fool who lived that way -
You - or myself, perhaps - I cannot say -
Along the road, scarce heeding where it tended,
Their way in sullen, sulky silence wended;

For, though twin sisters, these two charming creatures,
Rivals in hideousness of form and features,
Wasted no love between them as they went.
Pale Avarice,
With gloating eyes,
And back and shoulders almost double bent,
Was hugging close that fatal box
For which she's ever on the watch
Some glance to catch
Suspiciously directed to its locks;
And Envy, too, no doubt with silent winking
At her green, ...

When you lie sleeping; golden hair
Tossed on your pillow, sea shell pink
Ears that nestle, I forbear
A moment while I look and think
How you are mine, and if I dare
To bend and kiss you lying there.

        *        *        *        *        *

A Raphael in the flesh! Resist
I cannot, though to break your sleep
Is thoughtless of me - you are kissed
And roused from slumber dreamless, deep -
You rub away the slumber's mist,
You scold and almost weep.

        *        *        *        *        *

It is too bad to wake you so,
Just for a kiss. But when awake
You sing and dance, nor seem to know
You slept a sleep too deep to break
From which I roused you long ago
For nothing but my passion's sake -
What though your heart ...

To die be given us, or attain!
Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, pray’d
At burning noon: so warriors said,
Scarf’d with the cross, who watch’d the miles
Of dust that wreath’d their struggling files
Down Lydian mountains: so, when snows
Round Alpine summits eddying rose,
The Goth, bound Rome-wards: so the Hun,
Crouch’d on his saddle, when the sun
Went lurid down o’er flooded plains
Through which the groaning Danube strains
To the drear Euxine: so pray all,
Whom labours, self-ordain’d, enthrall;
Because they to themselves propose
On this side the all-common close
A goal which, gain’d, may give repose.
So pray they: and to stand again
Where they stood once, to them were pain;
Pain to thread back and to renew
Past ...

Secret and wise as nature, like the wind
Melancholy or light-hearted without reason,
And like the waxing or the waning moon
Ever pale and lovely: you are like these
Because you are free and live by your own law;
While I, desiring life and half alive,
Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on.
Your beauty is your life and my content,
And I will liken you to an apple-tree,
Mary and Margaret playing under the branches,
And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes,
And scattered blossom like your little smiles.

        Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
    Your head like the golden-rod,
        And we will go sailing away from here
    To the beautiful Land of Nod.
        Away from life's hurry and flurry and worry,
    Away from earth's shadows and gloom,
        To a world of fair weather we'll float off together,
    Where roses are always in bloom.

        Just shut your eyes and fold your hands,
    Your hands like the leaves of a rose,
        And we will go sailing to those fair lands
    That never an atlas shows.
        On the North and the West they are bounded by rest,
    On the South and the East, by dreams;
        'Tis the country ideal, where nothing is real,
    But everything only seems.

        Just drop down the curtains o...

Lasciato hai, Morte, senza sole il mondo.

HER TRUE WORTH WAS KNOWN ONLY TO HIM AND TO HEAVEN.


    Death, thou the world, since that dire arrow sped,
Sunless and cold hast left; Love weak and blind;
Beauty and grace their brilliance have resign'd,
And from my heavy heart all joy is fled;
Honour is sunk, and softness banishèd.
I weep alone the woes which all my kind
Should weep--for virtue's fairest flower has pined
Beneath thy touch: what second blooms instead?
Let earth, sea, air, with common wail bemoan
Man's hapless race; which now, since Laura died,
A flowerless mead, a gemless ring appears.
The world possess'd, nor knew her worth, till flown!
I knew it well, who here in grief abide;
And heaven too knows, which decks its forehead with my...

Deep in the green bracken lying,
    Close by the welcoming sea,
Dream I, and let all my dreaming
    Drift as it will, Love, to thee.

Sated with splendid caresses
    Showered by the sun in his pride,
Scorched by his passionate kisses
    Languidly ebbs the tide.

Curled up and sitting on her feet,
Within the window's deep embrasure,
Is Lydia; and across the street,
A lad, with eyes of roguish azure,
Watches her buried in her book.
In vain he tries to win a look,
And from the trellis over there
Blows sundry kisses through the air,
Which miss the mark, and fall unseen,
Uncared for. Lydia is thirteen.

My lad, if you, without abuse,
Will take advice from one who's wiser,
And put his wisdom to more use
Than ever yet did your adviser;

If you will let, as none will do,
Another's heartbreak serve for two,
You'll have a care, some four years hence,
How you lounge there by yonder fence
And blow those kisses through that screen--
For Lydia will be seventeen.

Awake, my Muse! awake each slumb'ring string,
And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing,
Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste;
Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste,
Lay down their grainy loads, as slow they move
Thro' lanes of reed and grass, to them a grove!
As if an Orpheus thou, they gather round,
Erect their tiny ears, and drink the sound.
Gray was the sky, save where the eastern ray
O'er fragrant hills proclaim'd th' approaching day;
Rurilla, loveliest virgin of the plain,
With spirits light, and mind without a stain,
Rose from her simple bed, refresh'd with rest;
Ah, Sleep! with marble finger had'st thou prest
Her lovely eyelids till a later hour,
And by a blissful vision's fairy pow'r
Hadst thou impress'd her mind with forms of love,
T...

Poets attempt the noblest task they can,
Praising the Author of all good in man,
And, next, commemorating worthies lost,
The dead in whom that good abounded most.
Thee, therefore, of commercial fame, but more
Famed for thy probity from shore to shore,
Thee, Thornton! worthy in some page to shine,
As honest and more eloquent than mine,
I mourn; or, since thrice happy thou must be,
The world, no longer thy abode, not thee.
Thee to deplore were grief misspent indeed;
It were to weep that goodness has its meed,
That there is bliss prepared in yonder sky,
And glory for the virtuous when they die.
What pleasure can the miser’s fondled hoard,
Or spendthrift’s prodigal excess afford,
Sweet as the privilege of healing woe
By virtue suffer’d combating below?
T...

I was very cold
    In the summer weather;
The sun shone all his gold,
But I was very cold--
Alas, we were grown old,
    Love and I together!
Oh, but I was cold
    In the summer weather!

Sudden I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen:
"Truly, scorn did harm her!"
I said, and I grew warmer;
"Better men the charmer
    Knows at least a dozen!"
I said, and I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen.

Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover;
And my heart at rest
Lies in the spring's young nest:
My love she loves me best,
    And the frost is over!
Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover!

The King has asked of his son so good,
"Why art thou hushed and heavy of mood?
O fair it is to ride abroad.
Thou playest not, and thou laughest not;
All thy good game is clean forgot."

"Sit thou beside me, father dear,
And the tale of my sorrow shalt thou hear.

Thou sendedst me unto a far-off land,
And gavest me into a good Earl's hand.

Now had this good Earl daughters seven,
The fairest of maidens under heaven.

One brought me my meat when I should dine,
One cut and sewed my raiment fine.

One washed and combed my yellow hair,
And one I fell to loving there.

Befell it on so fair a day,
We minded us to sport and play.

Down in a dale my horse bound I,
Bound on my saddle speedily.

Bright red she...

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.