In these gay thoughts the Loves and Graces shine,
And all the writer lives in every line;
His easy art may happy nature seem,
Trifles themselves are elegant in him.
Sure, to charm all was his peculiar fate,
Who without flattery pleased the fair and great;
Still with esteem no less conversed than read;
With wit well-natured, and with books well-bred:
His heart, his mistress, and his friend did share,
His time, the Muse, the witty, and the fair.
Thus wisely careless, innocently gay,
Cheerful he play'd the trifle, Life, away;
Till Fate scarce felt his gentle breath suppress'd,
As smiling infants sport themselves to rest.
Even rival wits did Voiture's death deplore,
And the gay mourn'd who never mourn'd before;
The truest hearts for Voiture heaved with sighs,

To Isabel Swinburne.

The far green westward heavens are bland,
The far green Wiltshire downs are clear
As these deep meadows hard at hand:
The sight knows hardly far from near,
Nor morning joy from evening cheer.
In cottage garden-plots their bees
Find many a fervent flower to seize
And strain and drain the heart away
From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas
At every turn on every way.
But gladliest seems one flower to expand
Its whole sweet heart all round us here;
’Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land.
Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear
Where engines yell and halt and veer
Can vex the sense of him who sees
One flower-plot midway, that for trees
Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey
For bowers like those that take the breeze

I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beautys mold
And dearly he loves me.

One morn we strolled on our dry walk,
Or quiet home all full in view,
And held such intermitted talk
As we are wont to do.

My thoughts on former pleasures ran;
I thought of Kilve's delightful shore,
Our pleasant home when spring began,
A long, long year before.

A day it was when I could bear
Some fond regrets to entertain;
With so much happiness to spare,
I could not feel a pain.

The green earth echoed to the feet
Of lambs that bounded through the glade,
From shade to sunshine, and as fleet
From sunshine back to shade.

Birds warbled round me, and each trace
Of inward sadness had its...

Like morning, when her early breeze
Breaks up the surface of the seas,
That, in those furrows, dark with night,
Her hand may sow the seeds of light--

Thy Grace can send its breathings o'er
The Spirit, dark and lost before,
And, freshening all its depths, prepare
For Truth divine to enter there.

Till David touched his sacred lyre.
In silence lay the unbreathing wire;
But when he swept its chords along,
Even Angels stooped to hear that song.

So sleeps the soul, till Thou, oh LORD,
Shalt deign to touch its lifeless chord--
Till, waked by Thee, its breath shall rise
In music, worthy of the skies!

The Grey Brethren





Some of the happiest remembrances of my childhood are of days spent in a little Quaker colony on a high hill.

The walk was in itself a preparation, for the hill was long and steep and at the mercy of the north-east wind; but at the top, sheltered by a copse and a few tall trees, stood a small house, reached by a flagged pathway skirting one side of a bright trim garden.

I, with my seven summers of lonely, delicate childhood, felt, when I gently closed the gate behind me, that I shut myself into Peace. The house was always somewhat dark, and there were no domestic sounds. The two old ladies, sisters, both born in the last century, sat in the cool, dim parlour, netting or sewing. Rebecca was small, with a nut-cracker nose and chin; Mary, tall and dignified, needed no...

"Welcome, mighty chief, once more
Welcome to this grateful shore;
Now no mercenary foe
Aims again the fatal blow,--
Aims at thee the fatal blow.


"Virgins fair and matrons grave,
Those thy conquering arm did save,
Build for thee triumphal bowers;
Strew, ye fair, his way with flowers,--
Strew your hero's way with flowers."

Jess and Jill are pretty girls,
    Plump and well to do,
In a cloud of windy curls:
    Yet I know who
Loves me more than curls or pearls.

I'm not pretty, not a bit -
    Thin and sallow-pale;
When I trudge along the street
    I don't need a veil:
Yet I have one fancy hit.

Jess and Jill can trill and sing
    With a flute-like voice,
Dance as light as bird on wing,
    Laugh for careless joys:
Yet it's I who wear the ring.

Jess and Jill will mate some day,
    Surely, surely:
Ripen on to June through May,
While the sun shines make their hay,
    Slacken steps demurely:
Yet even there I lead the way.

In golden youth when seems the earth
A Summer-land of singing mirth,
When souls are glad and hearts are light,
And not a shadow lurks in sight,
We do not know it, but there lieu
Somewhere veiled under evening skies
A garden which we all must see -
The garden of Gethsemane.

With joyous steps we go our ways,
Love lends a halo to our days;
Light sorrows sail like clouds afar,
We laugh, and say how strong we are.
We hurry on; and hurrying, go
Close to the borderland of woe
That waits for you, and waits for me -
Forever waits Gethsemane.

Down shadowy lanes, across strange streams,
Bridged over by our broken dreams;
Behind the misty caps of years,
Beyond the great salt fount of tears,
The garden lies.    Strive as you may,
You ca...

Sylvan Muses, can ye sing
Of the beauty of the Spring?
Have ye seen on earth that sun
That a heavenly course hath run?
Have ye lived to see those eyes
Where the pride of beauty lies?
Have ye heard that heavenly voice
That may make Love's heart rejoice?
Have ye seen Aglaia, she
Whom the world may joy to see?
If ye have not seen all these,
Then ye do but labour leese;
While ye tune your pipes to play
But an idle roundelay;
And in sad Discomfort's den
Everyone go bite her pen;
That she cannot reach the skill
How to climb that blessed hill
Where Aglaia's fancies dwell,
Where exceedings do excell,
And in simple truth confess
She is that fair shepherdess
To whom fairest flocks a-field
Do their service duly yield:
On whom never...

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine,
Letting her long hair trail into her wine.
Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin
Slip and are dulled against her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and flouts Debauchery;
Those fiends who in their heavy pleasantries
Gouge and destroy, still keep a strange regard
For majesty - her body strong and hard.
A goddess, or a sultan's regal wife
A faithful Paynim of voluptuous life
Her eyes call mortal beings to the charms
Of ready breasts, between her open arms.
She feels, she knows - this maid, this barren girl
By our desire fit to move the world
The gift of body's beauty is sublime
And draws forgiveness out of every crime.
She knows no Hell, or any afterlife,
And when her time shall come to face the Night
She'll ...

With buoyant heart he left his home for that bright wond'rous land
Where gold ore gleams in countless mines, and gold dust strews the sand;
And youth's dear ties were riven all, for as wild, as vain, a dream
As the meteor false that leads astray the traveller with its gleam.

Vainly his father frowned dissent, his mother, tearful, prayed,
Vainly his sisters, with fond words, his purpose would have stayed;
He heard them all with heedless ear, with dauntless heart and bold -
Whisp'ring to soothe each yearning fear "I go to win you gold."

Restless he paced the deck until he saw the sails unfurled
Of the ship which was to bear him to that new and distant world;
And when his comrades stood with him and watched the lessening land,
His clear laugh rose the loudest 'mid that gay go...

'Tis summer still, yet now and then a leaf
Falls from some stately tree.    True type of life!
How emblamatic of the pangs that grief
Wrings from our blighted hopes, that one by one
Drop from us in our wrestle with the strife
And natural passions of our stately youth.
And thus we fall beneath life's summer sun.
Each step conducts us through an opening door
Into new halls of being, hand in hand
With grave Experience, until we command
The open, wide-spread autumn fields, and store
The full ripe grain of Wisdom and of Truth.
As on life's tott'ring precipice we stand,
Our sins like withered leaves are blown about the land.

    I.

    O night, send up the harvest moon
    To walk about the fields,
    And make of midnight magic noon
    On lonely tarns and wealds.

    In golden ranks, with golden crowns,
    All in the yellow land,
    Old solemn kings in rustling gowns,
    The shocks moon-charmed stand.

    Sky-mirror she, afloat in space,
    Beholds our coming morn:
    Her heavenly joy hath such a grace,
    It ripens earthly corn;

    Like some lone saint with upward eyes,
    Lost in the deeps of prayer:
    The people still their prayers and sighs,
    And gazing ripen there.

    II.

    So, like the corn moon-ripened last,
    Would I, weary and gray,
    On golden memories ripen fast,
    And ripening pass awa...

The passion you forbade my lips to utter
    Will not be silenced.    You must hear it in
The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter:
    And when the tempest nears, with wail and din,
I know your calm forgetfulness is broken,
And to your heart you whisper, "He has spoken."

All nature understands and sympathises
    With human passion.    When the restless sea
Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises
    To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me.
And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting.
Your heart must tell you, "He is not forgetting."

When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing
    Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll,
Know that my pent-up passion is inditing
    A cypher message for your woman's soul;
And when the law...

I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe-hush'd, I study them long and long.

Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,
Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew,
A reaper came, and swung his cradled scythe
Around this stump, and, shearing slowly, drew
Far round among the clover, ripe for hay,
A circle clean and grey;
And here among the scented swathes that gleam,
Mixed with dead daisies, it is sweet to lie
And watch the grass and the few-clouded sky,
Nor think but only dream.

For when the noon was turning, and the heat
Fell down most heavily on field and wood,
I too came hither, borne on restless feet,
Seeking some comfort for an aching mood.
Ah, I was weary of the drifting hours,
The echoing city towers,
The blind grey streets, the jingle of the throng,
Weary of hope that like a shape of stone
Sat near at hand wi...

    "Once songs as lullabies to thee I sung,
    To sleep hath sung thee now an angel's tongue."

    From the German of Ruckert.



A lovely babe was lying
    Upon its mother's breast;
And she, with soft, low music.
    Was hushing it to rest.

The song was sweet and gentle,
    And loving in its tone;
And in its touching tenderness
    A mother's love was shown.

And still it floated onward,
    With melody so deep,
Till closed the dark-fringed eyelids,
    The baby was asleep.

And still beside his cradle
    She sang the same low hymn,
Till he smiled, as he was sleeping,
    At angel fancies dim.

Years passed.--The helpless infant
    Was now a happy boy;
And often rang his laughter,...

'T is spring! The boats bound to the sea;
The breezes, loitering kindly over
The fields, again bring herds and men
The grateful cheer of honeyed clover.

Now Venus hither leads her train;
The Nymphs and Graces join in orgies;
The moon is bright, and by her light
Old Vulcan kindles up his forges.

Bind myrtle now about your brow,
And weave fair flowers in maiden tresses;
Appease god Pan, who, kind to man,
Our fleeting life with affluence blesses;

But let the changing seasons mind us,
That Death's the certain doom of mortals,--
Grim Death, who waits at humble gates,
And likewise stalks through kingly portals.

Soon, Sestius, shall Plutonian shades
Enfold you with their hideous seemings;
Then love and mirth and joys of earth
Sh...