I have listened to the sighing of the burdened and the bound,
I have heard it change to crying, with a menace in the sound;
I have seen the money-getters pass unheeding on the way,
As they went to forge new fetters for the people day by day.

Then the voice of Labour thundered forth its purpose and its need,
And I marvelled, and I wondered, at the cold dull ear of greed;
For as chimes, in some great steeple, tell the passing of the hour,
So the voices of the people tell the death of purchased power.

All the gathered dust of ages, God is brushing from His book;
He is opening up its pages, and He bids His children look;
And in shock and conflagration, and in pestilence and strife,
He is speaking to the nations, of the brevity of life.

Mother Earth herself is shaken...

I.

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek,
And think that I would not be over-meek,
In rolling out upfollowed thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak.
Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?
For, when men stared at what was most divine
With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm,
Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine
Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them.

II.
On Seeing The Elgin Marbles.


My spirit is too weak, mortality
Weighs heavily upon me like unwilling sleep,

Though the times be dark and dreary,
Though the way be long,
Keep your spirits bright and cheery,--
--"Bide a wee, and dinna weary!"
Is a heartsome song.

I saw, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
And day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of night
Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Aeolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixed stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings.
Where, chanting through...

PEACE.

[Footnote: I have here used rimes although the original has none. With notions of translating severer now than when, many years ago, I attempted this poem, I should not now take such a liberty. In a few other points also the translation is not quite close enough to please me; but it must stand.]

High in heaven the sun was glowing,
White cloud-waves were round him flowing;
The sea was still and grey.
Thinking in dreams, by the helm I lay:
Half waking, half in slumber, then
Saw I Christ, the Saviour of men.
In undulating garments white
He walked in giant shape and height
Over land and sea.
High in the heaven up towered his head;
His hands in blessing forth he spread
Over land and sea.
And for a heart, in his breast
He bore the sun; there did...

There's a happy time coming,
    When the boys come home.
There's a glorious day coming,
    When the boys come home.
We will end the dreadful story
Of this treason dark and gory
In a sunburst of glory,
    When the boys come home.

The day will seem brighter
    When the boys come home,
For our hearts will be lighter
    When the boys come home.
Wives and sweethearts will press them
In their arms and caress them,
And pray God to bless them,
    When the boys come home.

The thinned ranks will be proudest
    When the boys come home,
And their cheer will ring the loudest
    When the boys come home.
The full ranks will be shattered,
And the bright arms will be battered,
And the battle-standards tattered,
    When th...

"What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
    This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
    And, you'll observe, our lives are rank lives too."

"Oh no, I am not lost! Oh no, I've come here
    (And I have brought my lute, see, in my hand),
To see you, and to sing of all you suffer
    To the great world, and make it understand!"

"Well, say! If one of those who'd robbed you thousands,
    Dropped you a sixpence in the gutter where
You lay and rotted, would you call her angel,
    For all her charming smile and dainty air?"

"Oh no, I come not thus! Oh no, I've come here
    With heart ...

She is as in a field of silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.

Can I make white enough my thought for thee,
    Or wash my words in light? Thou hast no mate
To sit aloft in the silence silently
    And twin those matchless heights undesecrate.
Reverend as Lear, when, lorn of shelter, he
    Stood, with his old white head, surprised at fate;
Alone as Galileo, when, set free,
    Before the stars he mused disconsolate.

Ay, and remote, as the dead lords of song,
    Great masters who have made us what we are,
For thou and they have taught us how to long
    And feel a sacred want of the fair and far:
Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire -
Our only greatness is that we aspire.

[1]

No pond nor pool within his haunt
But paid a certain cormorant
Its contribution from its fishes,
And stock'd his kitchen with good dishes.
Yet, when old age the bird had chill'd,
His kitchen was less amply fill'd.
All cormorants, however grey,
Must die, or for themselves purvey.
But ours had now become so blind,
His finny prey he could not find;
And, having neither hook nor net,
His appetite was poorly met.
What hope, with famine thus infested?
Necessity, whom history mentions,
A famous mother of inventions,
The following stratagem suggested:
He found upon the water's brink
A crab, to which said he, 'My friend,
A weighty errand let me send:
Go quicker than a wink -
Down to the fishes sink,
And tell them they a...

Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.
’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt, thou lov’st me not!
But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimm’d unwrinkled Rhine
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.

Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river’s flow,
Were re...

Come home, come home! and where is home for me,
Whose ship is driving o’er the trackless sea?
To the frail bark here plunging on its way,
To the wild waters, shall I turn and say
To the plunging bark, or to the salt sea foam,
        You are my home.

Fields once I walked in, faces once I knew,
Familiar things so old my heart believed them true,
These far, far back, behind me lie, before
The dark clouds mutter, and the deep seas roar,
And speak to them that ’neath and o’er them roam
        No words of home.

Beyond the clouds, beyond the waves that roar,
There may indeed, or may not be, a shore,
Where fields as green, and hands and hearts as true,
The old forgotten semblance may renew,
And offer exiles driven far o’er the salt sea foam
        ...

Inscription for a Garden Wall

Winds blow the open grassy places bleak;
But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,
They eddy over it too toppling weak
To blow the earth or anything self-clear;
Moisture and color and odor thicken here.
The hours of daylight gather atmosphere.

It was the lovely moon--she lifted
Slowly her white brow among
Bronze cloud-waves that ebbed and drifted
Faintly, faintlier afar.
Calm she looked, yet pale with wonder,
Sweet in unwonted thoughtfulness,
Watching the earth that dwindled under
Faintly, faintlier afar.
It was the lovely moon that lovelike
Hovered over the wandering, tired
Earth, her bosom gray and dovelike,
Hovering beautiful as a dove....
The lovely moon:--her soft light falling
Lightly on roof and poplar and pine--
Tree to tree whispering and calling,
Wonderful in the silvery shine
Of the round, lovely, thoughtful moon.

I think I never passed so sad an hour,
    Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night.
The edifice from basement to the tower
    Was one resplendent blaze of colored light.
Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging,
    Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest.
"Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing,"
    I said, "and here find rest."

I heard the heavenly organ's voice of thunder,
    It seemed to give me infinite relief.
I wept. Strange eyes looked on in well-bred wonder.
    I dried my tears: their gaze profaned my grief.
Wrapt in the costly furs, and silks and laces
    Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me.
I could not read, in all those proud cold faces,
    One thought of sympathy.

I watched them bowing a...

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.

His statue in an aureole fills the shrine,
The reckless nightingale, the roaming fawn,
Share the broad blessing of his lifted hands,
Under the canopy, above the lawn.

But one strange night, a night of gale and flood,
A sound came louder than the wild wind's tone;
The grave-gates shook and opened: and one stood
Blue in the moonlight, rotten to the bone.

Then on the statue, graven with holy smiles,
There came another smile--tremendous--one
Of an Egyptian god. 'Why should you rise?
'Do I not guard your secret from the sun?

The nations come; they kneel among the f...

I have known the most dear that is granted us here,
More supreme than the gods know above,
Like a star I was hurled through the sweet of the world,
And the height and the light of it, Love.
I have risen to the uttermost Heaven of Joy,
I have sunk to the sheer Hell of Pain
But, it's not going to happen again, my boy,
It's not going to happen again.

It's the very first word that poor Juliet heard
From her Romeo over the Styx;
And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hell
When she starts her immortal old tricks;
What Paris was tellin' for good-bye to Helen
When he bundled her into the train
Oh, it's not going to happen again, old girl,
It's not going to happen again.

Those who have laid the harp aside
And turn'd to idler things,
From very restlessness have tried
The loose and dusty strings.
And, catching back some favourite strain,
Run with it o'er the chords again.

But Memory is not a Muse,
O Wordsworth! though 'tis said
They all descend from her, and use
To haunt her fountain-head:
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of Poesie,
Pleases me better than the toil
Of smoothing under hardened hand,
With Attic emery and oil,
The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.

Without his governance, in vain
Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold
If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold