Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,
From strife and tumult far;
From scenes where Satan wages still
His most successful war.


The calm retreat, the silent shade,
With prayer and praise agree;
And seem by thy sweet bounty made
For those who follow thee.


There, if thy Spirit touch the soul,
And grace her mean abode,
Oh, with what peace, and joy, and love,
She communes with her God!


There like the nightingale she pours
Her solitary lays;
Nor asks a witness of her song,
Nor thirsts for human praise.


Author and Guardian of my life,
Sweet source of light divine,
And (all harmonious names in one)
My Saviour, thou art mine!


What thanks I owe thee, and what love,
A boundless, endless st...

Tanagra! think not I forget
Thy beautifully-storeyd streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blythe and liberal shepherd boy,
Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheaved with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes.

I promise to bring back with me
What thou with transport wilt receive,
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal shall bereave
In later times thy mouldering walls,
Until the last old turret falls;
A crown, a crown from Athens won!
A crown no god can wear, beside Latonas son.

There may be cities who refuse
To their own child the honours due,
And look ungently on the Muse;
But ever shall those cities rue
The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,

From "One Day and Another"


What little things are those
That hold our happiness!
A smile, a glance, a rose
Dropped from her hair or dress;
A word, a look, a touch, -
These are so much, so much.

An air we can't forget;
A sunset's gold that gleams;
A spray of mignonette,
Will fill the soul with dreams
More than all history says,
Or romance of old days.

For of the human heart,
Not brain, is memory;
These things it makes a part
Of its own entity;
The joys, the pains whereof
Are the very food of love.

They won't frown always, -- some sweet day
When I forget to tease,
They'll recollect how cold I looked,
And how I just said 'please.'

Then they will hasten to the door
To call the little child,
Who cannot thank them, for the ice
That on her lisping piled.

Fair things are slow to fade away,
Bear witness you, that yesterday1
From out the Ghost of Pindar inyou
Roll’d an Olympian; and they say2

That here the torpid mummy wheat
Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet
As that which gilds the glebe of England,
Sunn’d with a summer of milder heat.

So may this legend for awhile,
If greeted by your classic smile,
Tho’ dead in its Trinacrian Enna,
Blossom again on a colder isle.

A little more, a little less!--
O shadow-hunters pitiless,
Why then so eager, say!
What'er you leave the grave will take,
And all you gain and all you make,
It will not last a day!

Full soon will come the Reaper Black,
Cut thorns and flowers mark his track
Across Life's meadow blithe.
Oppose him, meet him as you will,
Old Time's behests he harkens still,
Unsparing wields his scythe.

A horrid mutiny by stealth
Breaks out,--of power, fame and wealth
Deserted you shall be!
The foam upon your lip is rife;
The last enigma now of Life
Shall Death resolve for thee.

You call for help--'tis all in vain!
What have you for your toil and pain,
What have you at the last?
Poor luckless hunter, are you dumb?
This way the cold p...

Non veggio ove scampar mi possa omai.

AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS HER EYES ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN AT FIRST.


    No hope of respite, of escape no way,
Her bright eyes wage such constant havoc here;
Alas! excess of tyranny, I fear,
My doting heart, which ne'er has truce, will slay:
Fain would I flee, but ah! their amorous ray,
Which day and night on memory rises clear,
Shines with such power, in this the fifteenth year,
They dazzle more than in love's early day.
So wide and far their images are spread
That wheresoe'er I turn I alway see
Her, or some sister-light on hers that fed.
Springs such a wood from one fair laurel tree,
That my old foe, with admirable skill,
Amid its boughs misleads me at his will.

MACGREGOR.

    'Tis time to sleep, my little boy:
        Why gaze thy bright eyes so?
    At night our children, for new joy
        Home to thy father go,
    But thou art wakeful! Sleep, my child;
        The moon and stars are gone;
    The wind is up and raving wild,
        But thou art smiling on!

    My child, thou hast immortal eyes
        That see by their own light;
    They see the children's blood--it lies
        Red-glowing through the night!
    Thou hast an ever-open ear
        For sob or cry or moan:
    Thou seemest not to see or hear,
        Thou only smilest on!

    When first thou camest to the earth,
        All sounds of strife were still;
    A silence lay about thy birth,
        And thou didst sleep thy fill:
...

Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair.
Fain was he for life, here lies he low:
With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,
Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,
And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring
So lone is the land that in this lonely room
Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss
Part and heap again on his quiet breast,
What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss
Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes
Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies,
And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast
To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren groun...

He who has suffered shipwreck fears to sail
Upon the seas, though with a gentle gale.

We rovers bold,
To the land of Gold,
Over the bowling billows are gliding:
Eager to toil,
For the golden spoil,
And every hardship biding.
See! See!
Before our prows' resistless dashes
The gold-fish fly in golden flashes!
'Neath a sun of gold,
We rovers bold,
On the golden land are gaining;
And every night,
We steer aright,
By golden stars unwaning!
All fires burn a golden glare:
No locks so bright as golden hair!
All orange groves have golden gushings;
All mornings dawn with golden flushings!
In a shower of gold, say fables old,
A maiden was won by the god of gold!
In golden goblets wine is beaming:
On golden couches kings are dreaming!
The Golden Rule dries many tears!
The Golden Number rules the spheres!
Gold, go...

Picture and book remain,
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.

My temptation is quiet.
Here at life's end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bonc,
Can make the truth known.

Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;

A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind,
An old man's eagle mind.

Time and the Earth,
The old Father and Mother,
Their teeming accomplished,
Their purpose fulfilled,
Close with a smile
For a moment of kindness
Ere for the winter
They settle to sleep.

Failing yet gracious,
Slow pacing, soon homing,
A patriarch that strolls
Through the tents of his children,
The Sun, as he journeys
His round on the lower
Ascents of the blue,
Washes the roofs
And the hillsides with clarity;
Charms the dark pools
Till they break into pictures;
Scatters magnificent
Alms to the beggar trees;
Touches the mist-folk
That crowd to his escort
Into translucencies
Radiant and ravishing,
As with the visible
Spirit of Summer
Gloriously vaporised,
Visioned in gold.

Love, though the...

Cupid, dumbe-Idoll, peeuish Saint of loue,
No more shalt thou nor Saint nor Idoll be;
No God art thou, a Goddesse shee doth proue,
Of all thine honour shee hath robbed thee.
Thy Bowe, halfe broke, is peec'd with old desire;
Her Bowe is beauty with ten thousand strings
Of purest gold, tempred with vertues fire,
The least able to kyll an hoste of Kings.
Thy shafts be spent, and shee (to warre appointed)
Hydes in those christall quiuers of her eyes
More Arrowes, with hart-piercing mettel poynted,
Then there be starres at midnight in the skyes.
    With these she steales mens harts for her reliefe,
    Yet happy he thats robd of such a thiefe!

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

Within the iron cities
    One walked unknown for years,
In his heart the pity of pities
    That grew for human tears

When love and grief were ended
    The flower of pity grew;
By unseen hands 'twas tended
    And fed with holy dew.

Though in his heart were barred in
    The blooms of beauty blown;
Yet he who grew the garden
    Could call no flower his own.

For by the hands that watered,
    The blooms that opened fair
Through frost and pain were scattered
    To sweeten the dull air.

--February 15, 1895

Afflictions they most profitable are
To the beholder and the sufferer:
Bettering them both, but by a double strain,
The first by patience, and the last by pain.

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it -
Came out with a fortune last fall, -
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe: but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason),
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse th...