All divine artists, humble, filial,
Turn therefore unto Thee, the poet's sun;
First-born of God's creation, only done
When from Thee, centre-form, the veil did fall,
And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal,
The highest Life with noblest Form made one,
To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun;
The living germ in this strange planet-ball,
Even as thy form in mind of striving saint.
So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint,
Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield,
In every splendour shadowy revealed:
But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint,
Power falls down straightway, speechless, dim-eyed, faint.

For a thousand years the Devil crouched
    On the white hot flags of hell:
For a thousand years the Devil cursed
    The imps that had chained him well;
For a thousand years the Devil sulked
    And planned with his hell-trained brain
Of the things he'd do, when his term was thru,
    And freed from the blistering chain.

He'd even the score with the men of earth,
    And give them back pain for pain,
For all of the days he had felt the blaze
    And the sear of the galling chain.
And it came to pass when his time was up
    And hell's gates were opened wide
That all hell rang, and the clinkered imps sang
    When the Devil passed Outside.

"I have served my time," the Devil said
    As he halted by heaven's gate;
I have sweated in hell fo...

They are the angels of that watery world,
With so much knowledge that they just aspire
To move themselves on golden fins,
Or fill their paradise with fire
By darting suddenly from end to end.

Glowing a thousand centuries behind
In pools half-recollected of the mind,
Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see
Beyond those curtains of Eternity.

When twilight flows into the room
And air becomes like water, you can feel
Their movements growing larger in the gloom,
And you are led
Backward to where they live beyond the dead.

But in the morning, when the seven rays
Of London sunlight one by one incline,
They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips
Suck the light in, so they are caught and played
Like salmon on a heavenly fishing ...

Muse—hide his name of whom I sing,
Lest his surviving house thou bring
For his sake into scorn,
Nor speak the school from which he drew
The much or little that he knew,
Nor place where he was born.


That such a man once was, may seem
Worthy of record (if the theme
Perchance may credit win)
For proof to man, what man may prove,
If grace depart, and demons move
The source of guilt within.


This man (for since the howling wild
Disclaims him, man he must be styled)
Wanted no good below,
Gentle he was, if gentle birth
Could make him such, and he had worth,
If wealth can worth bestow.


In social talk and ready jest,
He shone superior at the feast,
And qualities of mind,
Illustrious in the eyes of those
W...

The season was the childhood of sweet June,
Whose sunny hours from morning until noon
Went creeping through the day with silent feet,
Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;
Like the long years of blest Eternity
Never to be developed. Joy to thee,
Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
For thou the wonders of the depth canst know
Of this unfathomable flood of hours,
Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers -

...

They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had rased their love - which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather - t...

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the w...

Light as the breeze that hails the infant morn
The Milkmaid trips, as o'er her arm she slings
Her cleanly pail, some fav'rite lay she sings
As sweetly wild and cheerful as the horn.
O! happy girl I may never faithless love,
Or fancied splendour, lead thy steps astray;
No cares becloud the sunshine of thy day,
Nor want e'er urge thee from thy cot to rove.
What though thy station dooms thee to be poor,
And by the hard-earn'd morsel thou art fed;
Yet sweet content bedecks thy lowly bed,
And health and peace sit smiling at thy door:
Of these possess'd--thou hast a gracious meed,
Which Heaven's high wisdom gives, to make thee rich indeed!

1.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

2.
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are s...

A flea and a fly in a flue,
Were imprisoned; now what could they do?
    Said the fly, "let us flee."
    "Let us fly," said the flea,
And they flew through a flaw in the flue.

    A Grasshopper gay
    Sang the summer away,
    And found herself poor
    By the winter's first roar.
    Of meat or of bread,
    Not a morsel she had!
    So a begging she went,
    To her neighbour the ant,
        For the loan of some wheat,
        Which would serve her to eat,
    Till the season came round.
        'I will pay you,' she saith,
        'On an animal's faith,
    Double weight in the pound
    Ere the harvest be bound.'
        The ant is a friend
        (And here she might mend)
        Little given to lend.
    'How spent you the summer?'
        Quoth she, looking shame
        At the borrowing dame.
    'Night and day to each comer
        I sang, if you please.'
        'You sang! I'm at ease;...

I.
Why wail you, pretty plover? and what is it that you fear?
Is he sick your mate like mine? have you lost him, is he fled?
And there—the heron rises from his watch beside the mere,
And flies above the leper’s hut, where lives the living-dead.

II.
Come back, nor let me know it! would he live and die alone?
And has he not forgiven me yet, his over-jealous bride,
Who am, and was, and will be his, his own and only own,
To share his living death with him, die with him side by side?

III.
Is that the leper’s hut on the solitary moor,
Where noble Ulric dwells forlorn, and wears the leper’s weed?
The door is open. He! is he standing at the door,
My soldier of the Cross? it is he and he indeed!

IV.
My roses—will he take them now—mine, his—from off th...

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.

Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels the...

Why come ye here to sigh that I,
Who with crossed wrists so peaceless lie
Before ye, am at rest, at rest!
For that the pistons of my blood
No more in this machinery thud?
And on these eyes, that once were blest
With magnetism of fire, are prest
Thin, damp, pale eyelids for a sheath,
Whereon the bony claw of Death
Hath set his coins of unseen lead,
Stamped with the image of his head?

Why come ye here to weep for one,
Who is forgotten when he's gone
From ye and burthened with this rest
Your God hath given him! unsought
Of any prayers, whiles yet he wrought, -
And with what sacrifices bought!
Low, sweet communion mouth to mouth
Of thoughts that dewed eternal drought
Of Life's bald barrenness, - a jest,
An irony hath grown confessed
...

The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.

What is this talked of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.

There is our wildest mount, a headless horse.
But though it runs unbridled off its course,
And all our blandishments would seem defied,
We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.

As some bland soul, to whom a debtor says
"I'll now repay the amount I owe to you,"
In inward gladness feigns forgetfulness
That such a payment ever was his due

(His long thought notwithstanding), so did I
At our last meeting waive your proffered kiss
With quick divergent talk of scenery nigh,
By such suspension to enhance my bliss.

And as his looks in consternation fall
When, gathering that the debt is lightly deemed,
The debtor makes as not to pay at all,
So faltered I, when your intention seemed

Converted by my false uneagerness
To putting off for ever the caress.

W. P. V., 1865-67.

He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,
Though he doth not advance who goeth back,
And he that seeks, though he on nothing chance,
May still by words be said to find a lack.
This paradox of having, that is nought
In the world's meaning of the things it screens,
Is yet true of the substance of pure thought
And there means something by the nought it means.
For thinking nought does on nought being confer,
As giving not is acting not to give,
And, to the same unbribed true thought, to err
Is to find truth, though by its negative.
    So why call this world false, if false to be
    Be to be aught, and being aught Being to be?

    Time that has lifted you over them all,
    O'er John and o'er Paul;
    Writ you in capitals, made you the chief
    Word on the leaf,
    How did you, Peter, when ne'er on His breast
    You leaned and were blest,
    And none except Judas and you broke the faith
    To the day of His death,
    You, Peter, the fisherman, worthy of blame,
    Arise to this fame?

    'Twas you in the garden who fell into sleep
    And the watch failed to keep,
    When Jesus was praying and pressed with the weight
    Of the oncoming fate.
    'Twas you in the court of the palace who warmed
    Your hands as you stormed
    At the damsel, denying Him thrice, when she cried:
    "He walked at his side!"
    You, Peter, a wave, a star among clouds, a reed in...

'Tis noon. At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee
And worshipped, while the husbandmen withdrew
From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man
Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount,
Or rested in the shadow of the palm.

I, too, amid the overflow of day,
Behold the power which wields and cherishes
The frame of Nature. From this brow of rock
That overlooks the Hudson's western marge,
I gaze upon the long array of groves,
The piles and gulfs of verdure drinking in
The grateful heats. They love the fiery sun;
Their broadening leaves grow glossier, and their sprays
Climb as he looks upon them. In the midst,
The swelling river, into his green gulfs,
Unshadowed save by passing sails above,
Takes the redundant glory, and enjoys
The summer in his chilly b...