The dauntless three! For twenty days and nights
These heroes battled with the haughty heights;
For twenty spaces of the star and sun
These Romans kept their harness buckled on;
By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,
These fathers struggled in the great old year.
Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,
Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;
They fought with Nature till they reached the throne
Where morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!
There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,
Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;
There, where the silver arrows of the day
Smote slope and spire, they halted on their way.
Behind them were the conquered hills they faced
The vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;
And ...

The wan sun westers, faint and slow;
The eastern distance glimmers gray;
An eerie haze comes creeping low
Across the little, lonely bay;
And from the sky-line far away
About the quiet heaven are spread
Mysterious hints of dying day,
Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.

And weak, reluctant surges lap
And rustle round and down the strand.
No other sound . . . If it should hap,
The ship that sails from fairy-land!
The silken shrouds with spells are manned,
The hull is magically scrolled,
The squat mast lives, and in the sand
The gold prow-griffin claws a hold.

It steals to seaward silently;
Strange fish-folk follow thro' the gloom;
Great wings flap overhead; I see
The Castle of the Drowsy Doom
Vague thro' the changeless twilight...

A peasant had a docile bear,
A bear of manners pleasant,
And all the love she had to spare
She lavished on the peasant:
She proved her deep affection plainly
(The method was a bit ungainly).

The peasant had to dig and delve,
And, as his class are apt to,
When all the whistles blew at twelve
He ate his lunch, and napped, too,
The bear a careful outlook keeping
The while her master lay a-sleeping.

As thus the peasant slept one day,
The weather being torrid,
A gnat beheld him where he lay
And lit upon his forehead,
And thence, like all such winged creatures,
Proceeded over all his features.

The watchful bear, perceiving that
The gnat lit on her master,
Resolved to light upon the gnat
And plunge him in disaster;
She ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twen...

On His Learned And Useful Works; But More Particularly His Treatise Of Stonehenge,[1] By Him Restored To The True Founder.


    The longest tyranny that ever sway'd,
    Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
    Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
    And made his torch their universal light.
    So truth, while only one supplied the state,
    Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
    Still it was bought, like empiric wares, or charms,
    Hard words seal'd up with Artistotle's arms.
    Columbus was the first that shook his throne,
    And found a temperate in a torrid zone,
    The feverish air fann'd by a cooling breeze,
    The fruitful vales set round with shady trees:
    And guiltless men, who danced away their time,
    Fresh...

Grey dawn on the sand-hills, the night wind has drifted
All night from the rollers a scent of the sea;
With the dawn the grey fog his battalions has lifted,
At the call of the morning they scatter and flee.

Like mariners calling the roll of their number
The sea-fowl put out to the infinite deep.
And far overhead, sinking softly to slumber,
Worn out by their watching the stars fall asleep.

To eastward, where rests the broad dome of the skies on
The sea-line, stirs softly the curtain of night;
And far from behind the enshrouded horizon
Comes the voice of a God saying "Let there be light."

And lo, there is light! Evanescent and tender,
It glows ruby-red where 'twas now ashen-grey;
And purple and scarlet and gold in its splendour,
Behold, 'tis that ma...

The Head of the Bargi Pass, in snow. Gow and Ferdinand with their Captains.

GOW (to Ferdinand). The Queen’s host would be delivered me to-day, but that these Mountain Men have sent battalia to hold the Pass. They’re shod, helmed and torqued with soft gold. For the rest, naked. By no argument can I persuade ’em their gilt carcasses against my bombards avail not. What’s to do, Fox?

FERDINAND. Fatherless folk go furthest. These loud pagans
Are doubly fatherless. Consider; they came
Over the passes, out of all man’s world,
Adullamites, unable to endure
Its ancient pinch and belly-ache, full of revenges
Or wilfully forgetful. The land they found
Was manless-her raw airs uncloven by speech,
Earth without wheel-track, hoof-mark, hearth or ploughshare
Since God created; nor even a cave...

1.
Brothers! between you and me
Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar:
Yet in spirit oft I see
On thy wild and winding shore
Freedom's bloodless banners wave, -
Feel the pulses of the brave
Unextinguished in the grave, -
See them drenched in sacred gore, -
Catch the warrior's gasping breath
Murmuring 'Liberty or death!'

2.
Shout aloud! Let every slave,
Crouching at Corruption's throne,
Start into a man, and brave
Racks and chains without a groan:
And the castle's heartless glow,
And the hovel's vice and woe,
Fade like gaudy flowers that blow -
Weeds that peep, and then are gone
Whilst, from misery's ashes risen,
Love shall burst the captive's prison.

3.
Cotopaxi! bid the sound
Through thy sister mountains ring,

Within his cold and cheerless cell,
I heard the sighing Censor tell
That ev'ry charm of life was gone,
That ev'ry noble virtue long
Had ceas'd to wake the Minstrel's song,
And Vice triumphant stood alone.

"Poor gloomy reas'ner! come with me;
Smooth each dark frown, and thou shall see
Thy tale is but a mournful dream;
I'll show thee scenes to yield delight,
I'll show thee forms in Virtue bright,
Illum'd by Heav'n's unclouded beam.

"See Clarke, with ev'ry goodness grac'd,
Her mind the seat of Wit and Taste;
Tho' Wealth invites to Pleasure's bow'r,
See her the haunts of Woe descend;
Of many a friendless wretch the friend,
Pleas'd she exerts sweet Pity's pow'r.

"See her, with parent patriot care,
The infant orphan-mind prepare,

What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three Rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye.

    "Rejoice," said the Sun; "I will make thee gay
    With glory and gladness and holiday;
    I am dumb, O man, and I need thy voice!"
    But man would not rejoice.

    "Rejoice in thyself," said he, "O Sun,
    For thy daily course is a lordly one;
    In thy lofty place rejoice if thou can:
    For me, I am only a man."

    "Rejoice," said the Wind; "I am free and strong,
    And will wake in thy heart an ancient song;
    Hear the roaring woods, my organ noise!"
    But man would not rejoice.

    "Rejoice, O Wind, in thy strength," said he,
    "For thou fulfillest thy destiny;
    Shake the forest, the faint flowers fan;
    For me, I am only a man."

    "Rejoice," said the Night, "with moon and star,
    For the Sun and the...

    Veiled in visionary haze,
    Behold, the ethereal autumn days
    Draw near again!
    In broad array,
    With a low, laborious hum
    These ministers of plenty come,
That seem to linger, while they steal away.

    O strange, sweet charm
    Of peaceful pain,
When yonder mountain's bended arm
Seems wafting o'er the harvest-plain
A message to the heart that grieves,
And round us, here, a sad-hued rain
Of leaves that loosen without number
Showering falls in yellow, umber,
Red, or russet, 'thwart the stream!
Now pale Sorrow shall encumber
All too soon these lands, I deem;
    Yet who at heart believes
    The autumn, a false friend,
    Can bring us fatal harm?
Ah, mist-hung avenues in dream
Not more uncertainly extend

Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it.
Who shall snare or slay the white dove
Faith, whose very dreams crown it,
Gird it round with grace and peace, deep,
Warm, and pure, and soft as sweet sleep?
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it.
Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
As a seal upon thine arm.
How should we behold the days depart
And the nights resign their charm?
Love is as the soul: though hate and fear
Waste and overthrow, they strike not here.
Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
As a seal upon thine arm.

    You give no portent of impermanence
    Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
    Your bright, inherited crown
    Withered and fallen down.

    It seems that your blue immobility
    Has been for ever, and must for ever be.
    Man seems the unstable thing,
    Fevered and hurrying.

    So free of joy, so prodigal of tears,
    Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,
    Out-wear sun, rain and frost,
    By which you are soon lost.

Female Beauty at Venice.--No longer what it was in the time of Titian.-- His mistress.--Various Forms in which he has painted her.--Venus.--Divine and profane Love.--La Fragilita d'Amore--Paul Veronese.--His Women.-- Marriage of Cana.--Character of Italian Beauty.--Raphael's Fornarina.-- Modesty.


Thy brave, thy learned have passed away:
Thy beautiful!--ah, where are they?
The forms, the faces that once shone,
    Models of grace, in Titian's eye,
Where are they now, while flowers live on
    In ruined places, why, oh! why
    Must Beauty thus with Glory die?
That maid whose lips would still have moved,
    Could art have breathed a spirit through them;
Whose varying charms her artist loved
    More fondly every time he drew them,
(So oft beneath his touch they ...

I. Winter in Northumberland


Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,"
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt-sea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Sea-drift makes dimmer
The beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves qu...

Mark the day white, on which the Fates have smiled:
Eugenio and Egeria have a child.
On whom abundant grace kind Jove imparts
If she but copy either parent's parts.
Then, Muses! long devoted to her race,
Grant her Egeria's virtues and her face;
Nor stop your bounty there, but add to it
Eugenio's learning and Eugenio's wit.

When Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,
An awful Guide, in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answer'd keen,
And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays,
With priest's and warrior's voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,
Forsaken Israel wanders lone:
Our fathers would not know Thy ways,
And Thou hast left them to their own.

But present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.
And O, when gathers on ...