Like to the income must be our expense;
Man's fortune must be had in reverence.

Silence, and whirling worlds afar
Through all encircling skies.
What floods come o'er the spirit's bar,
What wondrous thoughts arise.

The earth, a mantle falls away,
And, winged, we leave the sod;
Where shines in its eternal sway
The majesty of God.

When daylight was yet sleeping under the billow,
    And stars in the heavens still lingering shone.
Young Kitty, all blushing, rose up from her pillow,
    The last time she e'er was to press it alone.
For the youth! whom she treasured her heart and her soul in,
    Had promised to link the last tie before noon;
And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen
    The maiden herself will steal after it soon.

As she looked in the glass, which a woman ne'er misses.
    Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two,
A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses.
    Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view.
Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces,
    She brushed him--he fell, alas; never to rise:
"Ah! such," said the girl...

H a! if yo'd nobbut known that lass,
A w'm sure yo'd call her bonny;
N oa other could her charms surpass,
N oa other had as monny.
A n ha aw lost mi peace o' mind,
H ark! an aw'll tell if yor inclined.
C awered in a nook one day aw set,
R aand which wild flaars wor growin;
O, that sweet time aw'st ne'er forget,
S oa long as aw've mi knowin.
T hear aw first saw this lovely lass;
I n thowtful mood shoo tarried,
"C ome be mi bride, sweet maid!" aw cried:
"K eep off!" shoo skriked, "aw'm married!"

(TO I -- a)

When rumour fain would fright my ear
With the destruction and decay
Of things familiar and dear,
And vaunt of a swift-running day
That sweeps the fair old Past away;
Whatever else be strange and new,
All other things may go or stay,
So that there be no change in you.

These loud mutations others fear
Find me high-fortressed 'gainst dismay,
They trouble not the tranquil sphere
That hallows with immortal ray
The world where love and lovers stray
In glittering gardens soft with dew -
O let them break and burn and slay,
So that there be no change in you.

Let rapine its republics rear,
And murder its red sceptre sway,
Their blood-stained riot comes not near
The quiet haven where we pray,
And work and love and la...

THE SUN SHINES,
The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks
Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks
Strews each side the lines.

A steeple
In purple elms, daffodils
Sparkle beneath; luminous hills
Beyond - and no people.

England, Oh Danaë
To this spring of cosmic gold
That falls on your lap of mould!
What then are we?

What are we
Clay-coloured, who roll in fatigue
As the train falls league by league
From our destiny?

A hand is over my face,
A cold hand. I peep between the fingers
To watch the world that lingers
Behind, yet keeps pace.

Always there, as I peep
Between the fingers that cover my face!
Which then is it that falls from its place
And rolls down the steep?

Is it the train

As faith thus sanctified the warrior's crest
While from the Papal Unity there came,
What feebler means had failed to give, one aim
Diffused thro' all the regions of the West;
So does her Unity its power attest
By works of Art, that shed, on the outward frame
Of worship, glory and grace, which who shall blame
That ever looked to heaven for final rest?
Hail countless Temples! that so well befit
Your ministry; that, as ye rise and take
Form spirit and character from holy writ,
Give to devotion, wheresoe'er awake,
Pinions of high and higher sweep, and make
The unconverted soul with awe submit.

Inscribed to my Mother


September, all glorious with gold, as a king
In the radiance of triumph attired,
Outlightening the summer, outsweetening the spring,
Broods wide on the woodlands with limitless wing,
A presence of all men desired.
Far eastward and westward the sun-coloured lands
Smile warm as the light on them smiles;
And statelier than temples upbuilded with hands,
Tall column by column, the sanctuary stands
Of the pine-forest's infinite aisles.
Mute worship, too fervent for praise or for prayer,
Possesses the spirit with peace,
Fulfilled with the breath of the luminous air,
The fragrance, the silence, the shadows as fair
As the rays that recede or increase.
Ridged pillars that redden aloft and aloof,
With never a branch for a ne...

High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.

To-night across a wild wet plain
A shadow sobs and strays;
The trees are whispering in the rain
Of long departed days.

I cannot say what forest saith
Its words are strange to me:
I only know that in its breath
Are tones that used to be.

Yea, in these deep dim solitudes
I hear a sound I know
The voice that lived in Penrith woods
Twelve weary years ago.

And while the hymn of other years
Is on a listening land,
The Angel of the Past appears
And leads me by the hand;

And takes me over moaning wave,
And tracts of sleepless change,
To set me by a lonely grave
Within a lonely range.

I.

The cannon is mute and the sword in its sheath
Uncrimsoned the banner floats joyous and fair:
Yet beauty is twining an evergreen wreath,
And the voice of the minstrel is heard on the air.
Are these for the glory encircling a crown
A phantom evoked but by tyranny's breath?
Are these for the conqueror's vaunted renown
All ghastly with gore, and all tainted with death?
Bright Star of the West broad Land of the Free,
The wreath and the anthem are woven for thee!


II.

When Tyranny came, his fierce lions aloft
Told the instinct that burned in his cohorts of mail
But our eagles swooped down, and the battle-field oft,
Was the grave of the foeman, stern, ghastly and pale.
The cloud of the strife rolled darkly away
And the carnage-fed wolv...

Inscribed to Joseph Addison, Esq. Secretary to Their Excellencies the Lords Justices.


        Gaudia curis.

        HOR.


Sir, I have long, and with impatience, sought
To ease the fulness of my grateful thought,
My fame at once, and duty to pursue,
And please the public, by respect to you.
    Though you, long since beyond Britannia known,
Have spread your country's glory with your own;
To me you never did more lovely shine,
Than when so late the kindled wrath divine
Quench'd our ambition, in great Anna's fate,
And darken'd all the pomp of human state.
Though you are rich in fame, and fame decay,
Though rais'd in life, and greatness fade away,
Your lustre brightens: virtue cuts the gloom
With purer rays, and sparkles near a tomb.

What beck’ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
’Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor’d,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

Why bade ye else, ye pow’rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, ’tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris’ners in ...

Not of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled
Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creep
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.
They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May
Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray
Of greenery: it is old earth's groping towards the steep
Heaven whom she childs us by.

(Variant from line 7.) b.

They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there hurled],
With talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,
But more cheer is when] May
Mells blue with snowwhit...

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

NEAR CHARD.

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his lovi...

Ever since man was man a Fiend has stood
Outside his House of Good,
War, with his terrible toys, that win men's hearts
To follow murderous arts.

His spurs, death-won, are but of little use,
Except as old refuse
Of Life; to hang and testify with rust
Of deeds, long one with dust.

A rotting fungus on a log, a tree,
A toiling worm, or bee,
Serves God's high purpose here on Earth to build
More than War's maimed and killed.

The Hebetude of asses, following still
Some Emperor's will to kill,
Is that of men who give their lives for what?
The privilege to be shot!

Grant men more vision, Lord! to read thy words,
That are not guns and swords,
But trees and flowers, lovely forms of Earth,
And all fair things of worth.

So ...

For my neighbour I'll not know,
Whether high he builds or no:
Only this I'll look upon,
Firm be my foundation.
Sound or unsound, let it be!
'Tis the lot ordain'd for me.
He who to the ground does fall
Has not whence to sink at all.

If ever Thou didst love me, love me now,
When round me beat the flattering vans of life,
Kissing with rapid breath my lifted brow.
Love me, if ever, when the murmur of strife,
In each dark byway of my being creeps,
When pity and pride, passion and passion's loss
Wash wavelike round the world's eternal cross,
Till 'mid my fears a new-born love indignant leaps.

If ever Thou canst love me, love me yet,
When sweet, impetuous loves within me stir
And the frail portals of my spirit fret--
The love of love, that makes Heaven heavenlier,
The love of earth, of birds, children and light,
Love of this bitter, lovely native land....
O, love me when sick with all these I stand
And Death's far-rumoured wings beat on the lonely night.