"Great peace in Europe! Order reigns
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"
So say her kings and priests; so say
The lying prophets of our day.
Go lay to earth a listening ear;
The tramp of measured marches hear;
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The shotted musket's murderous peal,
The night alarm, the sentry's call,
The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!
From Polar sea and tropic fen
The dying-groans of exiled men!
The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
The scaffold smoking with its stains!
Order, the hush of brooding slaves!
Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves!
O Fisher! of the world-wide net,
With meshes in all waters set,
Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell
Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
And open wide the banquet-hall,
W...

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why--
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

As repeated in chorus on the anniversary of her Names-day by the Sisters of St. Hubert at St. Anthony's Hospital, Denver, Col., Oct. 29, 1900.


Mother, our greetings be to thee,
On the glad anniversary
    Of this, thy festive day;
Thy daughters, daughters not of earth,
But bound by cords of Heavenly birth,
    Their love and greetings pay.

We thank thee, Mother, for thy care,
Thy watchfulness, and fervent prayer;
    And if 'tis Heaven's will,
May many a returning year
And namesday find our Mother here,
    Constant and watchful still.

Blest be that autumn brown and sere!
Bless-ed the day and blest the year,
    Of his[1] nativity!
Blest be the hospitals, which rise,
Resultant of thy enterprise,
    Thy zeal ...

Will she spring with a blush from the arms of Dawn,
When the sleepy songsters prune
Their dewy vestments on bush and thorn,
And the jovial magpie winds his horn
In sweet réveil to the lazy morn
And the sun comes all too soon?
Will she come with him from the farthest rim
Of the blue Pacific sea?
But how shall I know my lady? and by
What token will she know me?

Will she come to me in the noonday hush,
When the flowers are fast asleep
'Neath their counterpane of emerald plush
In the fragrant warmth of the under-brush,
Where Spring still lingers on moist and lush
While naught but the shadows creep,
And all is rest but the eager quest
And the buzz of the tireless bee?
But how shall I know my lady then?
And how will my love know me?

O...

    Let us be thankful - not only because
        Since last our universal thanks were told
    We have grown greater in the world's applause,
        And fortune's newer smiles surpass the old -

    But thankful for all things that come as alms
        From out the open hand of Providence: -
    The winter clouds and storms - -the summer calms -
        The sleepless dread - the drowse of indolence.

    Let us be thankful - thankful for the prayers
        Whose gracious answers were long, long delayed,
    That they might fall upon us unawares,
        And bless us, as in greater need, we prayed.

    Let us be thankful for the loyal hand
        That love held out in welcome to our own,
    When love and only love could understand
        The ne...

Far on its rocky knoll descried
Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky.
I climb’d; beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.

Bright in the sunset, weird and still,
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
As if the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charm’d it from his forest grave.

Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawl’d and grey,
The giant stones of Carnac sleep,
In the mild evening of the May.

No priestly stern procession now
Streams through their rows of pillars old;
No victims bleed, no Druids bow;
Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.

From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,
The orchis red gleams everywhere;
Gold broom with furze in blossom vies,
The blue-bells perfume all the air.

Here, where my fresh-turned furrows run,
And the deep soil glistens red,
I will repair the wrong that was done
To the living and the dead.
Here, where the senseless bullet fell,
And the barren shrapnel burst,
I will plant a tree, I will dig a well,
Against the heat and the thirst.


Here, in a large and a sunlit land,
Where no wrong bites to the bone,
I will lay my hand in my neighbour's hand,
And together we will atone
For the set folly and the red breach
And the black waste of it all;
Giving and taking counsel each
Over the cattle-kraal.


Here will we join against our foes,
The hailstroke and the storm,
And the red and rustling cloud that blows
The locust's mile-deep swarm.
Frost and murrain and floods let loose
...

0 Earth, Earth, Earth,
    I am dying for love of thee,
For thou hast given me birth,
    And thy hands have tended me.

I would fall asleep on thy breast
    When its swelling folds are bare,
When the thrush dreams of its nest
    And the life of its joy in the air;

When thy life is a vanished ghost,
    And the glory hath left thy waves,
When thine eye is blind with frost,
    And the fog sits on the graves;

When the blasts are shivering about,
    And the rain thy branches beats,
When the damps of death are out,
    And the mourners are in the streets.

Oh my sleep should be deep
    In the arms of thy swiftening motion,
And my dirge the mystic sweep
    Of the winds that nurse the ocean.

And my eye would slow...

Plain Jane - plain Jane;
This wor owd Butterworth's favourite strain:
For wealth couldn't buy,
Such pleasur an joy.
As he had wi his owd plain Jane.
Ther wor women who oft,
Maybe, thinkin him soft,
Who endeavoured to 'tice him away,
But tho ther breet een,
An ther red cheeks had been
Quite enuffto lead others astray, -
All ther efforts wor lost,
For he knew to his cost,
'At th' pleasur they promised browt pain,
Soa he left em behind,
Wol he went hooam to find,
Purer pleasures i'th' arms o' plain Jane.

Plain Jane, - plain Jane, -
Owd Butterworth sed he'd noa cause to complain:
Shoo wor hearty an strong,
An could troll aght a song,
An trubbles shoo held i' disdain,
He'd not sell her squint
For all th' brass i'th' mint,

Please your Grace, from out your store
Give an alms to one that's poor,
That your mickle may have more.
Black I'm grown for want of meat,
Give me then an ant to eat,
Or the cleft ear of a mouse
Over-sour'd in drink of source;
Or, sweet lady, reach to me
The abdomen of a bee;
Or commend a cricket's hip,
Or his huckson, to my scrip;
Give for bread, a little bit
Of a pease that 'gins to chit,
And my full thanks take for it.
Flour of fuz-balls, that's too good
For a man in needy-hood;
But the meal of mill-dust can
Well content a craving man;
Any orts the elves refuse
Well will serve the beggar's use.
But if this may seem too much
For an alms, then give me such
Little bits that nestle there
In the pris'ner's pannier.
So a ble...

Friends, whom she look’d at blandly from her couch
And her white wrist above it, gem-bedew’d,
Were arguing with Pentheusa: she had heard
Report of Creon’s death, whom years before
She listen’d to, well-pleas’d; and sighs arose;            
For sighs full often fondle with reproofs
And will be fondled by them. When I came
After the rest to visit her, she said,
"Myrtis! how kind! Who better knows than thou
The pangs of love? and my first love was he!"            
Tell me (if ever, Eros! are reveal’d
Thy secrets to the earth) have they been true
To any love who speak about the first?
What! shall these holier lights, like twinkling stars
In the few hours assign’d them, change their place,            
And, when comes ampler splendor, disappear?
Idler I am, and pard...

It's hard what poor fowk mun put up wi'!
What insults an snubs they've to tak!
What bowin an scrapin's expected,
If a chap's a black coit on his back.
As if clooas made a chap ony better,
Or riches improved a man's heart;
As if muck in a carriage smell'd sweeter
Nor th' same muck wod smell in a cart.

Give me one, hard workin, an' honest,
Tho' his clooas may be greasy and coorse;
If it's muck 'at's been getten bi labor,
It doesn't mak th' man onny worse.
Awm sick o' thease simpering dandies,
'At think coss they've getten some brass,
They've a reight to luk daan at th' hard workers,
An' curl up their nooas as they pass.

It's a poor sooart o' life to be leadin,
To be curlin an partin ther hair;
An seekin one's own fun and pleasure,
Nivv...

A gentleman of wit and charm,
A kindly heart, a cleanly mind,
One who was quick with hand or purse,
To lift the burden of his kind.
A brain well balanced and mature,
A soul that shrank from all things base,
So rode he forth that winter day,
Complete in every mortal grace.

And then the blunder of a horse,
The crash upon the frozen clods,
And Death? Ah! no such dignity,
But Life, all twisted and at odds!
At odds in body and in soul,
Degraded to some brutish state,
A being loathsome and malign,
Debased, obscene, degenerate.

Pathology? The case is clear,
The diagnosis is exact;
A bone depressed, a haemorrhage,
The pressure on a nervous tract.
Theology? Ah, there's the rub!
Since brain and soul together fade,
Then when the ...

Not all the pageant of the setting sun
Should yield the tired eyes of man delight,
No sweet beguiling power had stars at night
To soothe his fainting heart when day is done,
Nor any secret voice of benison
Might nature own, were not each sound and sight
The sign and symbol of the infinite,
The prophecy of things not yet begun.
So had these lips, so early sealed with sleep,
No fruitful word, life no power to move
Our deeper reverence, did we not see
How more than all he said, he was, how, deep
Below this broken life, he ever wove
The finer substance of a life to be.

Kusta Ben Luka is my name, I write
To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow-roysterer once,
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer,
And for no ear but his.
Carry this letter
Through the great gallery of the Treasure House
Where banners of the Caliphs hang, night-coloured
But brilliant as the night's embroidery,
And wait war's music; pass the little gallery;
Pass books of learning from Byzantium
Written in gold upon a purple stain,
And pause at last, I was about to say,
At the great book of Sappho's song; but no,
For should you leave my letter there, a boy's
Love-lorn, indifferent hands might come upon it
And let it fall unnoticed to the floor.
pause at the Treatise of parmenides
And hide it there, for Caiphs to world's end
Must keep that perfect, as they keep her s...

In the silent depth of space,
Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,
Glittering with a silver flame
Through eternity,
Rolls a great and burning star,
With a noble name,
Alcyone!

In the glorious chart of heaven
It is marked the first of seven;
'Tis a Pleiad:
And a hundred years of earth
With their long-forgotten deeds have come and gone,
Since that tiny point of light,
Once a splendour fierce and bright,
Had its birth
In the star we gaze upon.

It has travelled all that time -
Thought has not a swifter flight -
Through a region where no faintest gust
Of life comes ever, but the power of night
Dwells stupendous and sublime,
Limitless and void and lonely,
A region mute with age, and peopled only
With the dead and ruined ...

"O, open the door, some pity to show,
Keen blows the northern wind!
The glen is white with the drifted snow,
And the path is hard to find.

"No outlaw seeks your castle gate,
From chasing the King's deer,
Though even an outlaw's wretched state
Might claim compassion here.

"A weary Palmer, worn and weak,
I wander for my sin;
O, open, for our Lady's sake!
A pilgrim's blessing win!

"I'll give you pardons from the Pope,
And reliques from o'er the sea,
Or if for these you will not ope,
Yet open for charity.

"The hare is crouching in her form,
The hard beside the hind;
An aged man, amid the storm,
No shelter can I find.

"You hear the Ettrick's sullen roar,
Dark, deep, and strong is he,
And I must ford the Et...

i(Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!)
i(Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:)
i(Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;)
i(The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,)
i(Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;)
i(And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old)
i(In dancing silver-sandaled on the sea,)
i(Sing in their high and lonely melody.)
i(Come near, that no more blinded hy man's fate,)
i(I find under the boughs of love and hate,)
i(In all poor foolish things that live a day,)
i(Eternal beauty wandering on her way.)
i(Come near, come near, come near -- Ah, leave me still)
i(A little space for the rose-breath to fill!)
i(Lest I no more bear common things that crave;)
i(The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,)
i(The field-m...