What beck’ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
’Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor’d,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

Why bade ye else, ye pow’rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, ’tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris’ners in ...

Little elfin maid,
    Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
    Tenderer than tears,

And your rosebud mouth
    Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with
    Wistful questionings!

Like a flower you grew
    While life's bright sun shone.
Does the greedy spendthrift earth
    Heed a flower is gone?

No; but Love's fond ken,
    That gropes through Death's strange ways,
Almost seems to hear your Voice,
    Seems to see your Face!

Waves are the sea’s white daughters,
And raindrops the children of rain,
But why for my shimmering body
Have I a mother like Pain?

Night is the mother of stars,
And wind the mother of foam,
The world is brimming with beauty,
But I must stay at home.

When you were there, and you, and you,
Happiness crowned the night; I too,
Laughing and looking, one of all,
I watched the quivering lamplight fall
On plate and flowers and pouring tea
And cup and cloth; and they and we
Flung all the dancing moments by
With jest and glitter. Lip and eye
Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,
Improvident, unmemoried;
And fitfully and like a flame
The light of laughter went and came.
Proud in their careless transience moved
The changing faces that I loved.

Till suddenly, and otherwhence,
I looked upon your innocence.
For lifted clear and still and strange
From the dark woven flow of change
Under a vast and starless sky
I saw the immortal moment lie.
One instant I, an instant, knew
As God knows all....

Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears,
Where every passing anguish left its trace,
I pray you grant to me this depth of grace:
That I may see before it disappears,
Blown through the gateway of our hopes and fears
To death's insatiable last embrace,
The glory and the sadness of your face,
Its longing unappeased through all the years.
No bitterness beneath your sorrow clings;
Within the wild dark falling of your hair
There lies a strength that ever soars and sings;
Your mouth's mute weariness is not despair.
Perhaps among us craven earth-born things
God loves its silence better than a prayer.

They loiter round the Dock that holds yon Ship
Shuddering at the dark pool's defiled lip
From springing bows to foam-deriding stern;
They have left her, and await her call "Return!"
Like any human mistress she has cast
Careless her ancient lovers, till at last
Perforce she calls them, and perforce they come
Like any human lovers.... Ah, what home
Know these, save in the Ship, the Ship! She groans
Day and night with travail of their strenuous bones.
They know her for their mother, sister, spouse,
Heart of their passion, idol of their vows;
They ward her, and she is their sure defence
'Gainst the sad waters' leagued malevolence.
The Ship, the Ship: they are her slaves, and she
Their Liege, their Faith, their Fate, their History.
Lo! they have bought her buoyancy...

Sleep on! Sleep on! beguiling
    The hours with happy rest.
Sleep! - by that dreamy smiling,
    I know that thou art blest.
Thy mother over thee hath leant
    To guard thee from annoy,
And the angel of the innocent
    Was in that dream, my boy!

The tinting of the summer rose
    Is on that pillowed cheek,
And the quietness of summer thought
    Has made thy forehead meek.
And yet that little ample brow,
    And arching lip, are fraught
With pledges of high manliness,
    And promises of thought.

Thy polished limbs are rounded out
    As is the Autumn fruit,
And full and reedy is the voice
    That slumber hath made mute.
And, looking on thy perfect form -
    Hearing thy pleasant tone -
I almost weep for joy, my so...

His art was loving; Eres set his sign
    Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew
    The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.
Love feeds love's thirst as wine feeds love of wine;
Nor is there any potion from the vine
    Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew
    Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew
Inebriated with that draught divine.

Yet in his sober moments, when the sun
    Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,
    And passion's sea had grown an ebbing tide,
From out the many, Memory singled one
    Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all -
    The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
Not in those visions to the heart displaying
Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed:
Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
To paint those charms which varied as they beamed -
To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee, what language could they speak?

Ah! mayst thou ever be what now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love's image upon earth without his wing,
And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
And surely she who now so fondly rears
Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
Beholds the rainbow of her fut...

You shall not dare to drink this cup,
Yet fear this other I hold up -
Sings Love in Spain:

One brimming deep with woman's breath -
This other moon-lit cup is Death;
Drink one, drink twain.

No sippers we of ladies' lips,
Toyers of amorous finger tips,
Are we in Spain.

Terrible like a bright sweet sword,
And little tender is the Lord
Of Love in Spain.

His song a tiger-throated thing, -
A crouch, a cry, a frightened string;
Death the refrain.

Scarlet and lightning are its words,
There is no room in it for birds
And flowers in Spain.

A flash, and mouth is lost on mouth,
And life on life; so in the South
The cup we drain.

We do not dream and hesitate
About its brim; we fear not Fate
That l...

Since this is the last night I keep you home,
Come, I will consecrate you for the journey.

Rather I had you would not go. Nay come,
I will not again reproach you. Lie back
And let me love you a long time ere you go.
For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack
The will to love me. But even so
I will set a seal upon you from my lip,
Will set a guard of honour at each door,
Seal up each channel out of which might slip
Your love for me.

    I kiss your mouth. Ah, love,
Could I but seal its ruddy, shining spring
Of passion, parch it up, destroy, remove
Its softly-stirring crimson welling-up
Of kisses! Oh, help me, God! Here at the source
I'd lie for ever drinking and drawing in
Your fountains, as heaven drinks from out their course
The floods.<...

[In the vale of Grasmere, by the side of an old highway
leading to Ambleside, is a gate, which, from time out of
mind, has been called the Wishing-gate, from a belief that
wishes formed or indulged there have a favorable issue.]

Hope rules a land forever green:
All powers that serve the bright-eyed Queen
Are confident and gay;
Clouds at her bidding disappear;
Points she to aught? the bliss draws near,
And Fancy smooths the way.

Not such the land of Wishes there
Dwell fruitless day-dreams, lawless prayer,
And thoughts with things at strife;
Yet how forlorn, should ye depart
Ye superstitions of the heart,
How poor, were human life!

When magic lore abjured its might,
Ye did not forfeit one dear right,
One tender claim abate;
Witne...

Sweet cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
By Ridgway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
Who tend the hostelry:
O cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me!

The dance it is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
For night-long revelry;
And going home when day-dawning
Peeps pale upon the lea:
O dancing is a great thing,
A great thing to me!

Love is, yea, a great thing,
A great thing to me,
When, having drawn across the lawn
In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
Out from the nearest tree:
O love is, yes, a great thing,
A great thing to me!

Will these be always great things,
Great things to me? . . .
Le...

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and shape to shape
Dies momently through whorl and hollow,
And form and line and solid follow
Solid and line and form to dream
Fantastic down the eternal stream;
An obscure world, a shifting world,
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one,
...

(May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901)

Sceptre and orb and crown,
High ensigns of a sovranty containing
The beauty and strength and state of half a World,
Pass from her, and she fades
Into the old, inviolable peace.

I

She had been ours so long
She seemed a piece of ENGLAND: spirit and blood
And message ENGLAND'S self,
Home-coloured, ENGLAND in look and deed and dream;
Like the rich meadows and woods, the serene rivers,
And sea-charmed cliffs and beaches, that still bring
A rush of tender pride to the heart
That beats in ENGLAND'S airs to ENGLAND'S ends:
August, familiar, irremovable,
Like the good stars that shine
In the good skies that only ENGLAND knows:
So that we held it sure
GOD'S aim, GOD'S will, GOD'S way,
When Empire fr...

When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
Of my words othered in my hearing them.
Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.
I could not tell thee well of how I love,
Loved I not less by knowing it, were all
My self my love and no thought love to prove.
What consciousness makes more by consciousness,
It makes less, for it makes it less itself,
My sense of love could not my love rich-dress
Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.
    Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee):
    I love my love for thee more than I love thee.

Whether you frolic with comrade boys,
Or sit at your studies, or play with toys,
Whatever your station, or place, or sphere,
For just one purpose God sent you here;
And always and ever, you are to me -
Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.

So would I guard you from all mean things;
From the dwarfing of wealth, and from poverty's stings.
And from silly mothers of fuss and show,
And from dissolute fathers whose aims are low,
I would take you, and shield you, and set you free,
Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.

And then were the wish of my heart fulfilled,
Around about you, the world should build
A wall of Wisdom, with Truth for its Tower,
Where mind and body would wax in power,
Till the tender twig was a splendid tree -
Dear little Mothers, of Men ...

    Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
        Eat I must, and sleep I will,--and would that night were here!
    But ah!--to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
        Would that it were day again!--with twilight near!

    Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
        This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
    But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,--
        There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

    Love has gone and left me,--and the neighbors knock and borrow,
        And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,--
    And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
        There's this little street and this little house.