A quiet song for Ellen
The patient Ellen Ray,
A dreamer in the nightfall,
A watcher in the day.
The wedded of the sailor
Who keeps so far away:
A shadow on his forehead
For patient Ellen Ray.

When autumn winds were driving
Across the chafing bay,
He said the words of anger
That wasted Ellen Ray:
He said the words of anger
And went his bitter way:
Her dower was the darkness
The patient Ellen Ray.

Your comfort is a phantom,
My patient Ellen Ray;
You house it in the night-time,
It fronts you in the day;
And when the moon is very low
And when the lights are grey,
You sit and hug a sorry hope,
My patient Ellen Ray!

You sit and hug a sorry hope
Yet who will dare to say,
The sweetness of October

Whither was it that my spirit wended
When from thee my fleeting shadow moved?
Is not now each earthly conflict ended?
Say, have I not lived, have I not loved?

Art thou for the nightingales inquiring
Who entranced thee in the early year
With their melody so joy-inspiring?
Only whilst they loved they lingered here.

Is the lost one lost to me forever?
Trust me, with him joyfully I stray
There, where naught united souls can sever,
And where every tear is wiped away.

And thou, too, wilt find us in yon heaven,
When thy love with our love can compare;
There my father dwells, his sins forgiven,
Murder foul can never reach him there.

And he feels that him no vision cheated
When he gazed upon the stars on high;
For as each one metes, to...

Let me not see your grief!
O, let not any see
That grief,
Nor how your heart still rocks
Like a temple with long earthquake shocks.
Let me not see
Your grief.

These eyes have seen such wrong,
Yet remained cold:
Ills grown strong,
Corruption's many-headed worm
Destroying feet that moved so firm--
Shall these eyes see
Your grief?

And that black worm has crawled
Into the brain
Where thought had walked
Nobly, and love and honour moved as one,
And brave things bravely were begun....
Now, can thought see
Unabashed your grief?

Into that brain your grief
Has run like cleansing fire:
Your grief
Through these unfaithful eyes has leapt
And touched honour where it lightly slept.
Now when I see
In mem...

How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
    This thing Time is, that to the grave-will bear
    My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.

Through every sense a sweet balm permeates,
As music strikes new tones from every nerve.
The soul of Feeling enters at the gates
Of Intellect, and Fancy comes to serve
With fitting homage the propitious guest.
Nature, erewhile so lonely and oppressed,
Stands like a stately Presence, and looks down
As from a throne of power.    I have grown
Full twenty summers backwards, and my youth
Is surging in upon me till my hopes
Are as fresh-tinted as the checkered leaves
That the sun shines through.    All the future opes
Its endless corridors, where time unweaves
The threads of Error from the golden warp of Truth.

Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!

Take me away into the sunset's glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom!

Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which 't were well to die.

        A man on Nova Scotian Bay
        On broken raft was borne away,
        Right out on the open sea
        Where the storm did blow so free,
        No shelter from the wind or wave
        He thought the gulf would be his grave,
        He had no food life to sustain,
        He laid him down there to remain,
        What happened he did know no more,
        But old man on Prince Edward's shore
        Saw raft drifting near his shed
        And thought the poor man was quite dead,
        He called for help and soon they bore
        His lifeless body to the shore,
        But old man he did them desire
        To place the body near the fire,
        And wrap it up in blankets warm,
        Which did act like to a charm,
        And soon ...

Go to assemblies of the rich and gay,
The blazing hall of grandeur, and the throng
Of cities, and there listen to the song
Of festive harmony; then pause, and say,
Where is she found, who in her sphere might shine,
Attracting all? Where is she found, whose place
And dignity the proudest court might grace?
Go, where the desolate and dying pine
On their cold bed; open the cottage door;
Ask of that aged pair, who feebly bend
O'er their small evening fire, who is their friend;
Ask of these children of the village poor;
For this, at the great judgment, thou shalt find
Heaven's mercy, Lady, merciful and kind.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

    Such wast thou: now in earth below,
    Dust and a skeleton thou art.
    Above thy bones and clay,
    Here vainly placed by loving hands,
    Sole guardian of memory and woe,
    The image of departed beauty stands.
    Mute, motionless, it seems with pensive gaze
    To watch the flight of the departing days.
    That gentle look, that, wheresoe'er it fell,
    As now it seems to fall,
    Held fast the gazer with its magic spell;
    That lip, from which as from some copious urn,
    Redundant pleasure seems to overflow;
    That neck, on which love once so fondly hung;
    That loving hand, whose tender pressure still
    The hand it clasped, with trembling joy would thrill;
    That bosom, whose transparent loveliness
    The color from t...

(The Dictionary Of National Biography)

Sitting at times over a hearth that burns
    With dull domestic glow,
My thought, leaving the book, gratefully turns
    To you who planned it so.

Not of the great only you deigned to tell---
    The stars by which we steer---
But lights out of the night that flashed, and fell
    Tonight again, are here.

Such as were those, dogs of an elder day,
    Who sacked the golden ports,
And those later who dared grapple their prey
    Beneath the harbour forts:

Some with flag at the fore, sweeping the world
    To find an equal fight,
And some who joined war to their trade, and hurled
    Ships of the line in flight.

Whether their fame centuries long should ring
    They cared not over-muc...

I cannot change as others do,
Though you unjustly scorn;
Since that poor swain that sighs for you
For you alone was born.
No, Phillis, no; your heart to move
A surer way I’ll try;
And, to revenge my slighted love,
Will still love on and die.

When kill’d with grief Amyntas lies,
And you to mind shall call
The sighs that now unpitied rise,
The tears that vainly fall,
That welcome hour, that ends this smart,
Will then begin your pain;
For such a faithful tender heart
Can never break in vain.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, e're he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around,
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,
Comes a still voice, Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In a...

It fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Seyd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Ev...

Year 13 - .


Barbican, bartizan, battlement,
With the Abergavenny mountains blent,
Look, from the Raglan tower of Gwent,
My lord Hugh Clifford's ancient home
Shows, clear morns of the Spring or Summer,
Thrust out like thin flakes o' a silver foam
From a climbing cloud, for the hills gloom glummer,
Being shaggy with heath, yon. - I was his page;
A favorite then; and he of that age
When a man will love and be loved again,
Or die in the wars or a monastery:
Or toil till he stifle his heart's hard pain,
Or drink, drug his hopes and his lost love bury.
I was his page; and often we fared
Thro' the Clare desmene in Autumn hawking -
If the baron had known how he would have glared
From their bushy brows eyes dark with mocking!
- That of the ...

I
The clearest eyes in all the world they read
With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew
Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,
As they the light of ages quick and dead,
Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew
Can slay not one of all the works we knew,
Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.
The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,
And moulded of unconquerable thought,
And quickened with imperishable flame,
Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.

December 13, 1889.

II
Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom
Time is not lord, but servant? What ...

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.

If it be true, celestial powers,
That you have form'd me fair,
And yet, in all my vainest hours,
My mind has been my care:
Then, in return, I beg this grace,
As you were ever kind,
What envious Time takes from my face
Bestow upon my mind!