How thick the shades of evening close!
How pale the sky with weight of snows!
Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire,
And bid the joyless day retire.
Alas, in vain I try within
To brighten the dejected scene,
While rouz'd by grief these fiery pains
Tear the frail texture of my veins;
While winter's voice, that storms around,
And yon deep death-bell's groaning sound
Renew my mind's oppressive gloom,
Till starting horror shakes the room.

Is there in nature no kind power
To sooth affliction's lonely hour?
To blunt the edge of dire disease,
And teach these wintry shades to please?
Come, Cheerfulness, triumphant fair,
Shine through the hovering cloud of care:
O sweet of language, mild of mien,
O virtue's friend and pleasure's queen,
Asswag...

        Friendship, as love, is but a name,
        Save in a concentrated flame;
        And thus, in friendships, who depend
        On more than one, find not one friend.

        A hare who, in a civil way,
        Was not dissimilar to GAY,
        Was well known never to offend,
        And every creature was her friend.
        As was her wont, at early dawn,
        She issued to the dewy lawn;
        When, from the wood and empty lair,
        The cry of hounds fell on her ear.
        She started at the frightful sounds,
        And doubled to mislead the hounds;
        Till, fainting with her beating heart,
        She saw the horse, who fed apart.
        "My friend, the hounds are on my track;
        Oh, let me refuge on your back!"

It is sufficient if we pray
To Jove, who gives and takes away:
Let him the land and living find;
Let me alone to fit the mind.

By the grace of God and the courage
Of the peoples far and wide,
By the toil and sweat of those who lived,
And the blood of those who died,
We have won the fight, we have saved the Right,
For the Lord was on our side.

We have come through the valley of shadows,
We have won to the light again,
We have smitten to earth the evil thing,
And our sons have proved them men.
But not alone by our might have we won,
For the Lord fought in our van.

When the night was at its darkest,
And never a light could we see,--
When earth seemed like to be enslaved
In a monstrous tyranny;--
Then the flaming sword of our Over-Lord
Struck home for liberty.

All the words in the world cannot tell you
What brims in our hearts for you;
For the lives y...

A scene, which 'wildered fancy viewed
In the soul's coldest solitude,
With that same scene when peaceful love
Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove,
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream
With unalloying glory gleam,
And to the spirit's ear and eye
Are unison and harmony.
The moonlight was my dearer day;
Then would I wander far away,
And, lingering on the wild brook's shore
To hear its unremitting roar,
Would lose in the ideal flow
All sense of overwhelming woe;
Or at the noiseless noon of night
Would climb some heathy mountain's height,
And listen to the mystic sound
That stole in fitful gasps around.
I joyed to see the streaks of day
Above the purple peaks decay,
And watch the latest line of light
Just mingling with the shades of ni...

I.

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,
Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain
The knots that tangle human creeds,
The wounding cords that bind and strain
The heart until it bleeds,
Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn
Roof not a glance so keen as thine;
If aught of prophecy be mine,
Thou wilt not live in vain.


II.

Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;
Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow;
Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now
With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.
Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords
Can do away that ancient lie;
A gentler death shall Falsehood die,
Shot thro’ and thro’ with cunning words.



III.

Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,
Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,

UPON HIS FIRST APPEARANCE AT THE DUKE'S THEATRE, AFTER HIS RETURN FROM SCOTLAND, 1682.


    In those cold regions which no summers cheer,
    Where brooding darkness covers half the year,
    To hollow caves the shivering natives go;
    Bears range abroad, and hunt in tracks of snow:
    But when the tedious twilight wears away,
    And stars grow paler at the approach of day,
    The longing crowds to frozen mountains run;
    Happy who first can see the glimmering sun:
    The surly savage offspring disappear,
    And curse the bright successor of the year.
    Yet, though rough bears in covert seek defence,
    White foxes stay, with seeming innocence:
    That crafty kind with daylight can dispense.
    Still we are throng'd so full with Reynard's race,<...

Great dignity ever attends great grief,
And silently walks beside it;
And I always know when I see such woe
That Invisible Helpers guide it.
And I know deep sorrow is like a tide,
It cannot ever be flowing;
The high-water mark in the night and the dark -
Then dawn, and the outward going.

But the people who pull at my heart-strings hard
Are the ones whom destiny hurries
Through commonplace ways to the end of their days,
And pesters with paltry worries.
The peddlers who trudge with a budget of wares
To the door that is slammed unkindly;
The vendor who stands with his shop in his hands
Where the hastening hosts pass blindly;

The woman who holds in her poor flat purse
The price of her rent-room only,
While her starved eye feeds on the comfort...

Abundant plagues I late have had,
Yet none of these have made me sad:
For why? My Saviour with the sense
Of suff'ring gives me patience.

A bridle-path in the tangled mallee,
With blossoms unnamed and unknown bespread,
And two who ride through its leafy alley,
But never the sound of a horse’s tread.

And one by one whilst the foremost rider
Puts back the boughs which have grown apace,
And side by side where the track is wider,
Together they come to the olden place.

To the leaf-dyed pool whence the mallards flattered,
Or ever the horses had paused to drink;
Where the word was said and the vow was uttered
That brighten for ever its weedy brink.

And Memory closes her sad recital,
In Fate’s cold eyes there are kindly gleams,
While for one brief moment of blest requital,
The parted have met, in the Land of Dreams.


13th June, 1882

The feudal Keep, the bastions of Cohorn,
Even when they rose to check or to repel
Tides of aggressive war, oft served as well
Greedy ambition, armed to treat with scorn
Just limits; but yon Tower, whose smiles adorn
This perilous bay, stands clear of all offense;
Blest work it is of love and innocence,
A Tower of refuge built for the else forlorn.
Spare it, ye waves, and lift the mariner,
Struggling for life, into its saving arms!
Spare, too, the human helpers! Do they stir
'Mid your fierce shock like men afraid to die?
No; their dread service nerves the heart it warms,
And they are led by noble Hillary.

With short, sharp, violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor’ward,
And the rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
And waifs wreck’d seaward and wasted shoreward
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men,
Where the batter’d hull and the broken mast lie,
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wander’d here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

The skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
The blue sea over th...

Be pitiful, oh God! the night is long,
    My soul is faint with watching for the light,
    And still the gloom and doubt of seven-fold night
Hangs heavy on my spirit: Thou art strong.--
    Pity me, oh my God!

I stretch my hands through darkness up to Thee,--
    The stars are shrouded, and the night is dumb;
    There is no earthly help,--to Thee I come
In all my helplessness and misery,--
    Pity me, oh my God!

Be pitiful, oh God!--for I am weak,
    And all my paths are rough, and hedged about,--
    Hold Thou my hand dear Lord, and lead me out,
And bring me to the city which I seek,--
    Pity me, oh my God!

By the temptation which Thou didst endure,
    And by Thy fasting and Thy midnight prayer,
    Jesu! let me not utterly desp...

List, ye who pass by Lyulph's Tower
At eve; how softly then
Doth Aira-force, that torrent hoarse,
Speak from the woody glen!
Fit music for a solemn vale!
And holier seems the ground
To him who catches on the gale
The spirit of a mournful tale,
Embodied in the sound.

Not far from that fair site whereon
The Pleasure-house is reared,
As story says, in antique days
A stern-browed house appeared;
Foil to a Jewel rich in light
There set, and guarded well;
Cage for a Bird of plumage bright,
Sweet-voiced, nor wishing for a flight
Beyond her native dell.

To win this bright Bird from her cage,
To make this Gem their own,
Came Barons bold, with store of gold,
And Knights of high renown;
But one She prized, and only one;
Sir ...

Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?

Gentle Lily with this Album my warmest wishes take,
I know its pages oft thou'lt ope and prize it for my sake,
For, though a trifling offering, it bears the magic spell
Of coming from the hand of one who loves thee passing well.

O could thy young life's course be traced by will or wish of mine,
A smiling, joyous future - a bright lot would be thine,
No cloud should mar the gladness of thy fair youth's op'ning morn,
The roses of thy girlhood should be free from blight or thorn.

Howe'er, 'tis better ordered by a Blessed Power above
Who sends us cross and trial, as a token of His Love;
For we'd cling, ah! far too closely to earthly joys and ties,
Unwilling e'er to leave them for our home beyond the skies.

As the pages of this volume, unwritten, stainless, fair,

To Jesus, the Crown of my hope,
My soul is in haste to be gone:
O bear me, ye cherubim, up,
And waft me away to his throne!


My Saviour, whom absent I love,
Whom, not having seen, I adore;
Whose name is exalted above
All glory, dominion, and power;


Dissolve thou these bonds, that detain
My soul from her portion in thee;
Ah! strike off this adamant chain,
And make me eternally free.


When that happy era begins,
When array’d in thy glories I shine,
Nor grieve any more, by my sins,
The bosom on which I recline:


Oh, then shall the veil be removed,
And round me thy brightness be pour’d;
I shall meet him whom absent I loved,
I shall see whom unseen I adored.


And then, never more shall the ...

O Science reaching backward through the distance,
    Most earnest child of God,
Exposing all the secrets of existence,
    With thy divining rod,
I bid thee speed up to the heights supernal,
    Clear thinker, ne'er sufficed;
Go seek and bind the laws and truths eternal,
    But leave me Christ.

Upon the vanity of pious sages
    Let in the light of day.
Break down the superstitions of all ages -
    Thrust bigotry away;
Stride on, and bid all stubborn foes defiance
    Let Truth and Reason reign.
But I beseech thee, O Immortal Science,
    Let Christ remain.

What canst thou give to help me bear my crosses,
    In place of Him, my Lord?
And what to recompense for all my losses,
    And bring me sweet reward?
Thou couldst...