A Valentine's Song
About the Sheltered Garden Ground
Ad Martialem
Ad Nepotem
Ad Olum
Ad Piscatorem
Ad Quintilianum
Ad Se Ipsum
After reading "Antony and Cleopatra"
Air Of Diabelli's
An English Breeze
Apologetic Postscript Of A Year Later
As In Their Flight The Birds Of Song
As One Who Having Wandered All Night Long
At Last She Comes
Away with funeral Music
Before This Little Gift Was Come
Behold, As Goblins Dark Of Mein
Come From The Daisied Meadows
Come, Here Is Adieu To The City
Come, My Beloved, Hear From Me
Come, My Little Children, Here Are Songs For You
De Coenatione Micae
De Erotio Puella
De Ligurra
De Hortis Julii Martialis
De M. Antonio
Death, To The Dead For Evermore
Dedication
Dedicatory Poem For "Underwoods"
Duddingstone
Early In The Morning I Hear On Your Piano
Envoy For "A Child's Garden Of Verses"
Epitaphium Erotii
Fair Isle At Sea
Farewell
Fear Not, Dear Friend, But Freely Live Your Days
Fixed Is The Doom
Flower God, God Of The Spring
For Richmond's Garden Wall
Go, Little Book - The Ancient Phrase
God Gave To Me A Child In Part
Had I The Power That Have The Will
Hail! Childish Slaves of Social Rules
Hail, Guest, And Enter Freely
I Am Like One That For Long Days Had Sate
I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin
I Dreamed of Forest Alleys Fair
I Know not how, but as I count
I Love To Be Warm By The Red Fireside
I Who All The Winter Through
I, Whom Apollo Sometime Visited
In Charidemum
In Lupum
In Maximum
In The Green And Gallant Spring
It Blows A Snowing Gale
It's Forth Across The Roaring Foam
Know You The River Near To Grez
Late, O Miller
Let Love Go, If Go She Will
Light As The Linnet On My Way I Start
Lo! In thine honest eyes I read
Lo, Now, My Guest
Long Time I Lay In Little Ease
Loud And Low In The Chimney
Love, What Is Love?
Love's Vicissitudes
Man Sails The Deep Awhile
Men Are Heaven's Piers
Mine Eyes Were Swift To Know Thee
Music at the Villa Marina
My Heart, When First the black bird sings
My Love Was Warm
Ne Sit Ancillae Tibi Amor Pudor
Now Bare To The Beholder's Eye
Now When The Number Of My Years
O Dull Cold Northern Sky
On Now, Although The Year Be Done
Over The Land Is April
Prayer
Prelude
Since Thou Hast Given Me This Good Hope, O God
Since Years Ago For Evermore
Small Is The Trust When Love Is Green
So Live, So Love, So Use That Fragile Hour
Sonnets
Soon Our Friends Perish
Spring Carol
Spring Song
St. Martin's Summer
Still I Love To Rhyme
Stout Marches Lead to certain ends
Strange Are The Ways Of Men
Swallows Travel To And Fro
Tales Of Arabia
Tempest Tossed And Sore Afflicted
The Angler Rose, He Took His Rod
The Bour - Tree Den
The Cock's Clear Voice Into The Clearer Air
The Far - Farers
The Old Chimeras, Old Receipts
The Piper
The Relic taken, what avails the Shrine
The Summer Sun Shone Round Me
The Vanquished Knight
The Wind Blew Shrill And Smart
The Wind is Without There and Howls in The Tree
This Gloomy Northern Day
Thou Strainest Through The Mountain Fern (A Fragment)
Though deep indifference should drowse
To All That Love The Far And Blue
To Charles Baxter
To Friends At Home
To Madame Garschine
To Marcus
To Mesdames Zassetsky And Garschine
To Miss Cornish
To Mrs. Macmarland
To Ottilie
To Rosabelle
To Sydney
To The Commissioners of Northern Lights
To What Shall I Compare Her
Voluntary
What Man May Learn, What Man May Do
When The Sun Comes After Rain
You Looked so tempting in the Pew
MY love was warm; for that I crossed
The mountains and the sea,
Nor counted that endeavour lost
That gave my love to me.
If that indeed were love at all,
As still, my love, I trow,
By what dear name am I to call
The bond that holds me now
TO her, for I must still regard her
As feminine in her degree,
Who has been my unkind bombarder
Year after year, in grief and glee,
Year after year, with oaken tree;
And yet betweenwhiles my laudator
In terms astonishing to me -
To the Right Reverend The Spectator
I here, a humble dedicator,
Bring the last apples from my tree.
In tones of love, in tones of warning,
She hailed me through my brief career;
And kiss and buffet, night and morning,
Told me my grandmamma was near;
Whether she praised me high and clear
Through her unrivalled circulation,
Or, sanctimonious insincere,
She damned me with a misquotation -
A chequered but a sweet relation,
Say, was it not, my granny dear?
Believe me, granny, altogether
Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
Oft have you spruced my wounded feather,
Oft brought a light into my eyes -
For notice still the writer cries.
In any civil age or nation,
The book that is not talked of dies.
So that shall be my termination:
Whether in praise or execration,
Still, if you love me, criticise!
FAREWELL, and when forth
I through the Golden Gates to Golden Isles
Steer without smiling, through the sea of smiles,
Isle upon isle, in the seas of the south,
Isle upon island, sea upon sea,
Why should I sail, why should the breeze?
I have been young, and I have counted friends.
A hopeless sail I spread, too late, too late.
Why should I from isle to isle
Sail, a hopeless sailor?
THE broad sun,
The bright day:
White sails
On the blue bay:
The far-farers
Draw away.
Light the fires
And close the door.
To the old homes,
To the loved shore,
The far-farers
Return no more.
COME, my little children, here are songs for you;
Some are short and some are long, and all, all are new.
You must learn to sing them very small and clear,
Very true to time and tune and pleasing to the ear.
Mark the note that rises, mark the notes that fall,
Mark the time when broken, and the swing of it all.
So when night is come, and you have gone to bed,
All the songs you love to sing shall echo in your head.
COME from the daisied meadows, where you linger yet -
Home, golden-headed playmate, ere the sun is set;
For the dews are falling fast
And the night has come at last.
Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest,
Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother's breast.
Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you;
she'll be your guardian and shield.
Lullaby, slumber, my darling, till morning be
bright upon mountain and field.
Long, long the shadows fall.
All white and smooth at home your little bed is laid.
All round your head be angels.
EARLY in the morning I hear on your piano
You (at least, I guess it's you) proceed to learn to play.
Mostly little minds should take and tackle their piano
While the birds are singing in the morning of the day.
FAIR Isle at Sea - thy lovely name
Soft in my ear like music came.
That sea I loved, and once or twice
I touched at isles of Paradise.
LOUD and low in the chimney
The squalls suspire;
Then like an answer dwindles
And glows the fire,
And the chamber reddens and darkens
In time like taken breath.
Near by the sounding chimney
The youth apart
Hearkens with changing colour
And leaping heart,
And hears in the coil of the tempest
The voice of love and death.
Love on high in the flute-like
And tender notes
Sounds as from April meadows
And hillside cotes;
But the deep wood wind in the chimney
Utters the slogan of death.
I LOVE to be warm by the red fireside,
I love to be wet with rain:
I love to be welcome at lamplit doors,
And leave the doors again.
AT last she comes, O never more
In this dear patience of my pain
To leave me lonely as before,
Or leave my soul alone again.
MINE eyes were swift to know thee, and my heart
As swift to love. I did become at once
Thine wholly, thine unalterably, thine
In honourable service, pure intent,
Steadfast excess of love and laughing care:
And as she was, so am, and so shall be.
I knew thee helpful, knew thee true, knew thee
And Pity bedfellows: I heard thy talk
With answerable throbbings. On the stream,
Deep, swift, and clear, the lilies floated; fish
Through the shadows ran. There, thou and I
Read Kindness in our eyes and closed the match.
FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years
Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child,
Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds
His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars.
We also, love, forever dwell apart;
With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph,
The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that do wheel in air
Above a mountain, and with screams confer,
Far heard athwart the cedars.
Yet the years
Shall bring us ever nearer; day by day
Endearing, week by week, till death at last
Dissolve that long divorce. By faith we love,
Not knowledge; and by faith, though far removed,
Dwell as in perfect nearness, heart to heart.
We but excuse
Those things we merely are; and to our souls
A brave deception cherish.
So from unhappy war a man returns
Unfearing, or the seaman from the deep;
So from cool night and woodlands to a feast
May someone enter, and still breathe of dews,
And in her eyes still wear the dusky night.
MEN are Heaven's piers; they evermore
Unwearying bear the skyey floor;
Man's theatre they bear with ease,
Unfrowning cariatides!
I, for my wife, the sun uphold,
Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.
She, on her side, in fairy-wise
Deals in diviner mysteries,
By spells to make the fuel burn
And keep the parlour warm, to turn
Water to wine, and stones to bread,
By her unconquered hero-head.
A naked Adam, naked Eve,
Alone the primal bower we weave;
Sequestered in the seas of life,
A Crusoe couple, man and wife,
With all our good, with all our will,
Our unfrequented isle we fill;
And victor in day's petty wars,
Each for the other lights the stars.
Come then, my Eve, and to and fro
Let us about our garden go;
And, grateful-hearted, hand in hand
Revisit all our tillage land,
And marvel at our strange estate,
For hooded ruin at the gate
Sits watchful, and the angels fear
To see us tread so boldly here.
Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass
Our perishable days we pass;
Far more the thorn observe - and see
How our enormous sins go free -
Nor less admire, beside the rose,
How far a little virtue goes.
THE angler rose, he took his rod,
He kneeled and made his prayers to God.
The living God sat overhead:
The angler tripped, the eels were fed
WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.
Straightway my olden heart returns
And dances with the dancing burns;
It sings with the sparrows;
To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
Sings my heart aloud -
To the silver-bellied cloud,
To the silver rainy arrows.
It bears the song of the skylark down,
And it hears the singing of the town;
And youth on the highways
And lovers in byways
Follows and sees:
And hearkens the song of the leas
And sings the songs of the highways.
So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
And the grass sings in the meadows,
And the flowers smile in the shadows,
Sits my heart at ease,
Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadows.
TO what shall I compare her,
That is as fair as she?
For she is fairer - fairer
Than the sea.
What shall be likened to her,
The sainted of my youth?
For she is truer - truer
Than the truth.
As the stars are from the sleeper,
Her heart is hid from me;
For she is deeper - deeper
Than the sea.
Yet in my dreams I view her
Flush rosy with new ruth -
Dreams! Ah, may these prove truer
Than the truth.
WHEN the sun comes after rain
And the bird is in the blue,
The girls go down the lane
Two by two.
When the sun comes after shadow
And the singing of the showers,
The girls go up the meadow,
Fair as flowers.
When the eve comes dusky red
And the moon succeeds the sun,
The girls go home to bed
One by one.
And when life draws to its even
And the day of man is past,
They shall all go home to heaven,
Home at last.
LATE, O miller,
The birds are silent,
The darkness falls.
In the house the lights are lighted.
See, in the valley they twinkle,
The lights of home.
Late, O lovers,
The night is at hand;
Silence and darkness
Clothe the land.