"--the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale."
Aylmer's Field.


Five geese,--a landscape damp and wild,--
A stunted, not too pretty, child,
Beneath a battered gingham;
Such things, to say the least, require
A Muse of more-than-average Fire
Effectively to sing 'em.

And yet--Why should they? Souls of mark
Have sprung from such;--e'en Joan of Arc
Had scarce a grander duty;
Not always ('tis a maxim trite)
From righteous sources comes the right,--
From beautiful, the beauty.

Who shall decide where seed is sown?
Maybe some priceless germ was blown
To this unwholesome marish;
(And what must grow will still increase,
Though cackled round by half the geese
And ganders in the parish.)

Maybe th...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
    Giving the bud I give the flower.    I bow
    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
    Give one repose to pain I know not now,
    One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils?    In their retreat
    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

Often when warring for he wist not what,
An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,
Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;

Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot
The deed of grace amid the roar and reek;
Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak
He there has reached, although he has known it not.

For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act
Over the throes of artificial rage,
Has thuswise muffled victory's peal of pride,
Rended to ribands policy's specious page
That deals but with evasion, code, and pact,
And war's apology wholly stultified.

1915.

I.
I WAS the chief of the race—he had stricken my father dead—
But I gather’d my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look’d like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,
And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the light as the bravest hero of song,
And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong.
He lived on an isle in the ocean—we sail’d on a Friday morn—
He that had slain my father the day before I was born.

II.
And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.
But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro’ a boundless sea.

III.
And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch’d at before,
Where a silent ocean always broke on a si...

Some men I have beheld with wonderment,
Noble in form and feature, God's design,
In whom the thought must search, as in a mine,
For that live soul of theirs, by which they went
Thus walking on the earth. And I have bent
Frequent regard on women, who gave sign
That God willed Beauty, when He drew the line
That shaped each float and fold of Beauty's tent;
But the soul, drawing up in little space,
Thus left the form all staring, self-dismayed,
A vacant sign of what might be the grace
If mind swelled up, and filled the plan displayed:
Each curve and shade of thy pure form were Thine,
Thy very hair replete with the divine.

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

On death we mortals often run,
Just by the roads we take to shun.

A father's only heir, a son,
Was over-loved, and doted on
So greatly, that astrology
Was question'd what his fate might be.
The man of stars this caution gave -
That, until twenty years of age,
No lion, even in a cage,
The boy should see, - his life to save.
The sire, to silence every fear
About a life so very dear,
Forbade that any one should let
His son beyond his threshold get.
Within his palace walls, the boy
Might all that heart could wish enjoy -
Might with his mates walk, leap, and run,
And frolic in the wildest fun.
When come of age to love the chase,
That exercise was oft depicted
To him as one that brought disgrace,
To which but blackguards were addicted....

When the gardener has gone this garden
Looks wistful and seems waiting an event.
It is so spruce, a metaphor of Eden
And even more so since the gardener went,

Quietly godlike, but of course, he had
Not made me promise anything and I
Had no one tempting me to make the bad
Choice. Yet I still felt lost and wonder why.

Even the beech tree from next door which shares
Its shadow with me, seemed a kind of threat.
Everything was too neat, and someone cares

In the wrong way. I need not have stood long
Mocked by the smell of a mown lawn, and yet
I did. Sickness for Eden was so strong.

Lord, I confess, that Thou alone art able
To purify this my Augean stable:
Be the seas water, and the land all soap,
Yet if Thy blood not wash me, there's no hope.

Said a great Congregational preacher
To a hen, "You're a beautiful creature."
    And the hen, just for that,
    Laid an egg in his hat,
And thus did the Hen reward Beecher.

    The Lord gaed wi' a crood o' men
        Throu Jericho the bonny;
    'Twas ill the Son o' Man to ken
        Mang sons o' men sae mony:

    The wee bit son o' man Zacchay
        To see the Maister seekit;
    He speilt a fig-tree, bauld an' shy,
        An' sae his shortness ekit.

    But as he thoucht to see his back,
        Roun turnt the haill face til 'im,
    Up luikit straucht, an' til 'im spak--
        His hert gaed like to kill 'im.

    "Come doun, Zacchay; bestir yersel;
        This nicht I want a lodgin."
    Like a ripe aipple 'maist he fell,
        Nor needit ony nudgin.

    But up amang the unco guid
        There rase a murmurin won'er:
    "This is a deemis want o' heed,
        The man's a specia...

We know where deepest lies the snow,
And where the frost-winds keenest blow,
O'er every mountain's brow,
We long have known and learnt to bear
The wandering outlaw's toil and care,
But where we late were hunted, there
Our foes are hunted now.

We have their princely homes, and they
To our wild haunts are chased away,
Dark woods, and desert caves.
And we can range from hill to hill,
And chase our vanquished victors still;
Small respite will they find until
They slumber in their graves.

But I would rather be the hare,
That crouching in its sheltered lair
Must start at every sound;
That forced from cornfields waving wide
Is driven to seek the bare hillside,
Or in the tangled copse to hide,
Than be the hunter's hound.

    Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul
    Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone
    And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone
    Could draw the face of God, the titan high
    Whose genius smote like lightning from the sky -
    And shall he mold like dead leaves in the grave?
    Nay he is in us!    Let us dare and dare.
    God help us to be brave.

Quando dal proprio sito si rimove.

WHEN LAURA DEPARTS, THE HEAVENS GROW DARK WITH STORMS.


    When from its proper soil the tree is moved
Which Phoebus loved erewhile in human form,
Grim Vulcan at his labour sighs and sweats,
Renewing ever the dread bolts of Jove,
Who thunders now, now speaks in snow and rain,
Nor Julius honoureth than Janus more:
Earth moans, and far from us the sun retires
Since his dear mistress here no more is seen.
Then Mars and Saturn, cruel stars, resume
Their hostile rage: Orion arm'd with clouds
The helm and sails of storm-tost seamen breaks.
To Neptune and to Juno and to us
Vext Æolus proves his power, and makes us feel
How parts the fair face angels long expect.

MACGREGOR.

Death held our Lord in prison
For sin that did undo us;
But he hath up arisen
And brought our life back to us.
Therefore must we gladsome be,
Praise our God, and thankful be,
And sing out halleluja! Halleluja!

No man yet Death overcame--
All sons of men were helpless;
Sin for this was all to blame,
For no one yet was guiltless.
So Death came that early hour,
Over us took up the power,
Us held in's kingdom captive. Halleluja!

Jesus Christ, God's only Son,
Into our place descending,
Away with all our sins hath done,
And therewith from Death rending
Right and might, made him a jape,
Left him nothing but Death's shape:
His ancient sting--he has lost it: Halleluja!

That was a right wondrous strife
When Death in Life's...

    Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,
    With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,
    Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,
    And a knot of red roses sown in under there
        Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

    Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground
    Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;
    And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint
    And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint
        Round the lips of their favorite saint!

    And that lace at her throat - and the fluttering hands
    Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands,
    The flakes of their touches - first fluttering at
    The bow - then the roses - the hair - and then that
        Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat....

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty: - dreams, with which he trod
Companioned like some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.

When wandering mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoniäds;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.

By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spe...

Now o'er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red deer couches in the forest glades,
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I'll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin's rock, or dark Sabrina's streams.

On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O'er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn -
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold DID make
Feel "shooting pains in every joint in turn,")
Whe...