First, most, to thee, my son, I give this book + 

In which a friend’s and brother’s verses blend + 

With mine; for not son only⁠—brother, friend, + 

Art thou, through sonship which no veil can brook + 

Between the eyes that in each other look, + 

Or any shadow ’twixt the hearts that tend + 

Still nearer, with divine approach, to end + 

In love eternal that cannot be shook + 

When all the shakable shall cease to be. + 

With growing hope I greet the coming day + 

When from thy journey done I welcome thee + 

Who sharest in the names of all the three, + 

And take thee to the two, and humbly say, + 

Let this man be the fourth with us, I pray. + 

This must be the very night! + 

The moon knows it!⁠—and the trees! + 

They stand straight upright, + 

Each a sentinel drawn up, + 

As if they dared not know + 

Which way the wind might blow! + 

The very pool, with dead gray eye, + 

Dully expectant, feels it nigh, + 

And begins to curdle and freeze! + 

And the dark night, + 

With its fringe of light, + 

Holds the secret in its cup! + 

What can it be, to make + 

The poplars cease to shiver and shake, + 

And up in the dismal air + 

Stand straight and stiff as the human hair + 

When the human soul is dizzy with dread⁠— + 

All but those two that strain + 

Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain, + 

Though never a wind sends out a breath + 

To tunnel the foggy rheum of death? + 

What can it be has power to scare + 

The full-grown moon to the idiot stare + 

Of a blasted eye in the midnight air? + 

Something has gone wrong; + 

A scream will come tearing out ere long! + 

Still as death, + 

Although I listen with bated breath! + 

Yet something is coming, I know⁠—is coming! + 

With an inward soundless humming + 

Somewhere in me, or if in the air + 

I cannot tell, but it is there! + 

Marching on to an unheard drumming + 

Something is coming⁠—coming⁠— + 

Growing and coming! + 

And the moon is aware, + 

Aghast in the air + 

At the thing that is only coming + 

With an inward soundless humming + 

And an unheard spectral drumming! + 

Nothing to see and nothing to hear! + 

Only across the inner sky + 

The wing of a shadowy thought flits by, + 

Vague and featureless, faceless, drear⁠— + 

Only a thinness to catch the eye: + 

Is it a dim foreboding unborn, + 

Or a buried memory, wasted and worn + 

As the fading frost of a wintry sigh? + 

Anon I shall have it!⁠—anon!⁠—it draws nigh! + 

A night when⁠—a something it was took place + 

That drove the blood from that scared moon-face! + 

Hark! was that the cry of a goat, + 

Or the gurgle of water in a throat? + 

Hush! there is nothing to see or hear, + 

Only a silent something is near; + 

No knock, no footsteps three or four, + 

Only a presence outside the door! + 

See! the moon is remembering!⁠—what? + 

The wail of a mother-left, lie-alone brat? + 

Or a raven sharpening its beak to peck? + 

Or a cold blue knife and a warm white neck? + 

Or only a heart that burst and ceased + 

For a man that went away released? + 

I know not⁠—know not, but something is coming + 

Somehow back with an inward humming! + 

Ha! look there! look at that house, + 

Forsaken of all things, beetle and mouse! + 

Mark how it looks! It must have a soul! + 

It looks, it looks, though it cannot stir! + 

See the ribs of it, how they stare! + 

Its blind eyes yet have a seeing air! + 

It knows it has a soul! + 

Haggard it hangs o’er the slimy pool, + 

And gapes wide open as corpses gape: + 

It is the very murderer! + 

The ghost has modelled himself to the shape + 

Of this drear house all sodden with woe + 

Where the deed was done, long, long ago, + 

And filled with himself his new body full⁠— + 

To haunt for ever his ghastly crime, + 

And see it come and go⁠— + 

Brooding around it like motionless time, + 

With a mouth that gapes, and eyes that yawn + 

Blear and blintering and full of the moon, + 

Like one aghast at a hellish dawn!⁠— + 

The deed! the deed! it is coming soon! + 

For, ever and always, when round the tune + 

Grinds on the barrel of organ-Time, + 

The deed is done. And it comes anon: + 

True to the roll of the clock-faced moon, + 

True to the ring of the spheric chime, + 

True to the cosmic rhythm and rime, + 

Every point, as it first fell out, + 

Will come and go in the fearsome bout. + 

See! palsied with horror from garret to core, + 

The house cannot shut its gaping door; + 

Its burst eye stares as if trying to see, + 

And it leans as if settling heavily, + 

Settling heavy with sickness dull: + 

It also is hearing the soundless humming + 

Of the wheel that is turning⁠—the thing that is coming! + 

On the naked rafters of its brain, + 

Gaunt and wintred, see the train + 

Of gossiping, scandal-mongering crows + 

That watch, all silent, with necks a-strain, + 

Wickedly knowing, with heads awry + 

And the sharpened gleam of a cunning eye⁠— + 

Watch, through the cracks of the ruined skull, + 

How the evil business goes!⁠— + 

Beyond the eyes of the cherubim, + 

Beyond the ears of the seraphim, + 

Outside, forsaken, in the dim + 

Phantom-haunted chaos grim + 

He stands, with the deed going on in him! + 

O winds, winds, that lurk and peep + 

Under the edge of the moony fringe! + 

O winds, winds, up and sweep, + 

Up and blow and billow the air, + 

Billow the air with blow and swinge, + 

Rend me this ghastly house of groans! + 

Rend and scatter the skeleton’s bones + 

Over the deserts and mountains bare! + 

Blast and hurl and shiver aside + 

Nailed sticks and mortared stones! + 

Clear the phantom, with torrent and tide, + 

Out of the moon and out of my brain, + 

That the light may fall shadowless in again! + 

But, alas, then the ghost + 

O’er mountain and coast + 

Would go roaming, roaming! and never was swine + 

That, grubbing and talking with snork and whine + 

On Gadarene mountains, had taken him in + 

But would rush to the lake to unhouse the sin! + 

For any charnel + 

This ghost is too carnal; + 

There is no volcano, burnt out and cold, + 

Whose very ashes are gray and old, + 

But would cast him forth in reviving flame + 

To blister the sky with a smudge of shame! + 

Is there no help? none anywhere + 

Under the earth or above the air?⁠— + 

Come, sad woman, whose tender throat + 

Has a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note! + 

Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate, + 

Shears in hand, thy coming did wait! + 

Father, with blood-bedabbled hair! + 

Mother, all withered with love’s despair! + 

Come, broken heart, whatever thou be, + 

Hasten to help this misery! + 

Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn: + 

He is a horror, a hate, a scorn! + 

Come, if out of the holiest blue + 

That the sapphire throne shines through; + 

For pity come, though thy fair feet stand + 

Next to the elder-band; + 

Fling thy harp on the hyaline, + 

Hurry thee down the spheres divine; + 

Come, and drive those ravens away; + 

Cover his eyes from the pitiless moon, + 

Shadow his brain from her stinging spray; + 

Droop around him, a tent of love, + 

An odour of grace, a fanning dove; + 

Walk through the house with the healing tune + 

Of gentle footsteps; banish the shape + 

Remorse calls up thyself to ape; + 

Comfort him, dear, with pardon sweet; + 

Cool his heart from its burning heat + 

With the water of life that laves the feet + 

Of the throne of God, and the holy street! + 

O God, he is but a living blot, + 

Yet he lives by thee⁠—for if thou wast not, + 

They would vanish together, self-forgot, + 

He and his crime:⁠—one breathing blown + 

From thy spirit on his would all atone, + 

Scatter the horror, and bring relief + 

In an amber dawn of holy grief! + 

God, give him sorrow; arise from within, + 

His primal being, deeper than sin! + 

Why do I tremble, a creature at bay? + 

’Tis but a dream⁠—I drive it away. + 

Back comes my breath, and my heart again + 

Pumps the red blood to my fainting brain + 

Released from the nightmare’s nine-fold train: + 

God is in heaven⁠—yes, everywhere, + 

And Love, the all-shining, will kill Despair!⁠— + 

To the wall’s blank eyeless space + 

I turn the picture’s face. + 

But why is the moon so bare, up there? + 

And why is she so white? + 

And why does the moon so stare, up there⁠— + 

Strangely stare, out of the night? + 

Why stand up the poplars + 

That still way? + 

And why do those two of them + 

Start astray? + 

And out of the black why hangs the gray? + 

Why does it hang down so, I say, + 

Over that house, like a fringed pall + 

Where the dead goes by in a funeral?⁠— + 

Soul of mine, + 

Thou the reason canst divine: + 

Into thee the moon doth stare + 

With pallid, terror-smitten air! + 

Thou, and the Horror lonely-stark, + 

Outcast of eternal dark, + 

Are in nature same and one, + 

And thy story is not done! + 

So let the picture face thee from the wall, + 

And let its white moon stare! + 

In the Winter + 

In the winter, flowers are springing; + 

In the winter, woods are green, + 

Where our banished birds are singing, + 

Where our summer sun is seen! + 

Our cold midnights are coeval + 

With an evening and a morn + 

Where the forest-gods hold revel, + 

And the spring is newly born! + 

While the earth is full of fighting, + 

While men rise and curse their day, + 

While the foolish strong are smiting, + 

And the foolish weak betray⁠— + 

The true hearts beyond are growing, + 

The brave spirits work alone, + 

Where Love’s summer-wind is blowing + 

In a truth-irradiate zone! + 

While we cannot shape our living + 

To the beauty of our skies, + 

While man wants and earth is giving⁠— + 

Nature calls and man denies⁠— + 

How the old worlds round Him gather + 

Where their Maker is their sun! + 

How the children know the Father + 

Where the will of God is done! + 

Daily woven with our story, + 

Sounding far above our strife, + 

Is a time-enclosing glory, + 

Is a space-absorbing life. + 

We can dream no dream Elysian, + 

There is no good thing might be, + 

But some angel has the vision, + 

But some human soul shall see! + 

Is thy strait horizon dreary? + 

Is thy foolish fancy chill? + 

Change the feet that have grown weary + 

For the wings that never will. + 

Burst the flesh, and live the spirit; + 

Haunt the beautiful and far; + 

Thou hast all things to inherit, + 

And a soul for every star. + 

Christmas-Day, 1878 + 

I think I might be weary of this day + 

That comes inevitably every year, + 

The same when I was young and strong and gay, + 

The same when I am old and growing sere⁠— + 

I should grow weary of it every year + 

But that thou comest to me every day. + 

I shall grow weary if thou every day + 

But come to me, Lord of eternal life; + 

I shall grow weary thus to watch and pray, + 

For ever out of labour into strife; + 

Take everlasting house with me, my life, + 

And I shall be new-born this Christmas-day. + 

Thou art the Eternal Son, and born no day, + 

But ever he the Father, thou the Son; + 

I am his child, but being born alway⁠— + 

How long, O Lord, how long till it be done? + 

Be thou from endless years to years the Son⁠— + 

And I thy brother, new-born every day. + 

The New Year + 

Be welcome, year! with corn and sickle come; + 

Make poor the body, but make rich the heart: + 

What man that bears his sheaves, gold-nodding, home, + 

Will heed the paint rubbed from his groaning cart! + 

Nor leave behind thy fears and holy shames, + 

Thy sorrows on the horizon hanging low⁠— + 

Gray gathered fuel for the sunset-flames + 

When joyous in death’s harvest-home we go. + 

Two Rondels + 

When, in the mid-sea of the night, + 

I waken at thy call, O Lord, + 

The first that troop my bark aboard + 

Are darksome imps that hate the light, + 

Whose tongues are arrows, eyes a blight⁠— + 

Of wraths and cares a pirate horde⁠— + 

Though on the mid-sea of the night + 

It was thy call that waked me, Lord. + 

Then I must to my arms and fight⁠— + 

Catch up my shield and two-edged sword, + 

The words of him who is thy word⁠— + 

Nor cease till they are put to flight; + 

Then in the mid-sea of the night + 

I turn and listen for thee, Lord. + 

There comes no voice from thee, O Lord, + 

Across the mid-sea of the night! + 

I lift my voice and cry with might: + 

If thou keep silent, soon a horde + 

Of imps again will swarm aboard, + 

And I shall be in sorry plight + 

If no voice come from thee, my Lord, + 

Across the mid-sea of the night. + 

There comes no voice; I hear no word! + 

But in my soul dawns something bright:⁠— + 

There is no sea, no foe to fight! + 

Thy heart and mine beat one accord: + 

I need no voice from thee, O Lord, + 

Across the mid-sea of the night. + 

Rondel + 

Heart, Thou Must Learn to Do Without⁠— + 

Heart, thou must learn to do without⁠— + 

That is the riches of the poor, + 

Their liberty is to endure; + 

Wrap thou thine old cloak thee about, + 

And carol loud and carol stout; + 

Let thy rags fly, nor wish them fewer; + 

Thou too must learn to do without, + 

Must earn the riches of the poor! + 

Why should’st thou only wear no clout? + 

Thou only walk in love-robes pure? + 

Why should thy step alone be sure? + 

Thou only free of fortune’s flout? + 

Nay, nay! but learn to go without, + 

And so be humbly, richly poor. + 

Song + 

Lighter and Sweeter + 

Lighter and sweeter + 

Let your song be; + 

And for sorrow⁠—oh cheat her + 

With melody! + 

Smoke + 

Lord, I have laid my heart upon thy altar + 

But cannot get the wood to burn; + 

It hardly flares ere it begins to falter + 

And to the dark return. + 

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, makes damp the fuel; + 

In vain my breath would flame provoke; + 

Yet see⁠—at every poor attempt’s renewal + 

To thee ascends the smoke! + 

’Tis all I have⁠—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour, + 

Coldness and doubt and palsied lack: + 

Such as I have I send thee!⁠—perfect Giver, + 

Send thou thy lightning back. + 

To a Certain Critic + 

Such guests as you, sir, were not in my mind + 

When I my homely dish with care designed; + 

’Twas certain humble souls I would have fed + 

Who do not turn from wholesome milk and bread: + 

You came, slow-trotting on the narrow way, + 

O’erturned the food, and trod it in the clay; + 

Then low with discoid nostrils sniffing curt, + 

Cried, “Sorry cook! why, what a mess of dirt!” + 

Song + 

She Loves Thee, Loves Thee Not! + 

She loves thee, loves thee not! + 

That, that is all, my heart. + 

Why should she take a part + 

In every selfish blot, + 

In every greedy spot + 

That now doth ache and smart + 

Because she loves thee not⁠— + 

Not, not at all, poor heart! + 

Thou art no such dove-cot + 

Of virtues⁠—no such chart + 

Of highways, though the dart + 

Of love be through thee shot! + 

Why should she not love not + 

Thee, poor, pinched, selfish heart? + 

A Cry + 

Lord, hear my discontent: all blank I stand, + 

A mirror polished by thy hand; + 

Thy sun’s beams flash and flame from me⁠— + 

I cannot help it: here I stand, there he! + 

To one of them I cannot say, + 

Go, and on yonder water play; + 

Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion⁠— + 

I do not make the words of this my limping passion! + 

If I should say, Now I will think a thought, + 

Lo, I must wait, unknowing + 

What thought in me is growing, + 

Until the thing to birth be brought! + 

Nor know I then what next will come + 

From out the gulf of silence dumb: + 

I am the door the thing will find + 

To pass into the general mind! + 

I cannot say “I think⁠—” + 

I only stand upon the thought-well’s brink: + 

From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up⁠— + 

lift it in my cup. + 

Thou only thinkest⁠—I am thought; + 

Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought + 

Am I but as a fountain spout + 

From which thy water welleth out. + 

Thou art the only one, the all in all.⁠— + 

Yet when my soul on thee doth call + 

And thou dost answer out of everywhere, + 

I in thy allness have my perfect share. + 

From Home + 

Some men there are who cannot spare + 

A single tear until they feel + 

The last cold pressure, and the heel + 

Is stamped upon the outmost layer. + 

And, waking, some will sigh to think + 

The clouds have borrowed winter’s wing, + 

Sad winter, when the grasses spring + 

No more about the fountain’s brink. + 

And some would call me coward fool: + 

I lay a claim to better blood, + 

But yet a heap of idle mud + 

Hath power to make me sorrowful. + 

To My Mother Earth + 

O Earth, Earth, Earth, + 

I am dying for love of thee, + 

For thou hast given me birth, + 

And thy hands have tended me. + 

I would fall asleep on thy breast + 

When its swelling folds are bare, + 

When the thrush dreams of its nest + 

And the life of its joy in the air; + 

When thy life is a vanished ghost, + 

And the glory hath left thy waves, + 

When thine eye is blind with frost, + 

And the fog sits on the graves; + 

When the blasts are shivering about, + 

And the rain thy branches beats, + 

When the damps of death are out, + 

And the mourners are in the streets. + 

Oh my sleep should be deep + 

In the arms of thy swiftening motion, + 

And my dirge the mystic sweep + 

Of the winds that nurse the ocean. + 

And my eye would slowly ope + 

With the voice that awakens thee, + 

And runs like a glance of hope + 

Up through the quickening tree; + 

When the roots of the lonely fir + 

Are dipt in thy veining heat, + 

And thy countless atoms stir + 

With the gather of mossy feet; + 

When the sun’s great censer swings + 

In the hands that always be, + 

And the mists from thy watery rings + 

Go up like dust from the sea; + 

When the midnight airs are assembling + 

With a gush in thy whispering halls, + 

And the leafy air is trembling + 

Like a stream before it falls. + 

Thy shadowy hand hath found me + 

On the drifts of the Godhead’s will, + 

And thy dust hath risen around me + 

With a life that guards me still. + 

O Earth! I have caught from thine + 

The pulse of a mystic chase; + 

O Earth! I have drunk like wine + 

The life of thy swiftening race. + 

Wilt miss me, mother sweet, + 

A life in thy milky veins? + 

Wilt miss the sound of my feet + 

In the tramp that shakes thy plains + 

When the jaws of darkness rend, + 

And the vapours fold away, + 

And the sounds of life ascend + 

Like dust in the blinding day? + 

I would know thy silver strain + 

In the shouts of the starry crowd + 

When the souls of thy changing men + 

Rise up like an incense cloud. + 

I would know thy brightening lobes + 

And the lap of thy watery bars + 

Though space were choked with globes + 

And the night were blind with stars! + 

From the folds of my unknown place, + 

When my soul is glad and free, + 

I will slide by my God’s sweet grace + 

And hang like a cloud on thee. + 

When the pale moon sits at night + 

By the brink of her shining well, + 

Laving the rings of her widening light + 

On the slopes of the weltering swell, + 

I will fall like a wind from the west + 

On the locks of thy prancing streams, + 

And sow the fields of thy rest + 

With handfuls of sweet young dreams. + 

When the sound of thy children’s cry + 

Hath stricken thy gladness dumb, + 

I will kindle thine upward eye + 

With a laugh from the years that come. + 

Far above where the loud wind raves, + 

On a wing as still as snow + 

I will watch the grind of the curly waves + 

As they bite the coasts below; + 

When the shining ranks of the frost + 

Draw down on the glistening wold + 

In the mail of a fairy host, + 

And the earth is mossed with cold, + 

Till the plates that shine about + 

Close up with a filmy din, + 

Till the air is frozen out, + 

And the stars are frozen in. + 

I will often stoop to range + 

On the fields where my youth was spent, + 

And my feet shall smite the cliffs of change + 

With the rush of a steep descent; + 

And my glowing soul shall burn + 

With a love that knows no pall, + 

And my eye of worship turn + 

Upon him that fashioned all⁠— + 

When the sounding waves of strife + 

Have died on the Godhead’s sea, + 

And thy life is a purer life + 

That nurses a life in me. + 

Thy Heart + 

Make not of thy heart a casket, + 

Opening seldom, quick to close; + 

But of bread a wide-mouthed basket, + 

Or a cup that overflows. + 

O Lord, how happy is the time + 

When in thy love I rest! + 

When from my weariness I climb + 

Even to thy tender breast! + 

The night of sorrow endeth there⁠— + 

Thou art brighter than the sun; + 

And in thy pardon and thy care + 

The heaven of heaven is won. + 

Let the world call herself my foe, + 

Or let the world allure⁠— + 

I care not for the world; I go + 

To this dear friend and sure. + 

And when life’s fiercest storms are sent + 

Upon life’s wildest sea, + 

My little bark is confident + 

Because it holds by thee. + 

When the law threatens endless death + 

Upon the dreadful hill, + 

Straightway from her consuming breath + 

My soul goeth higher still⁠— + 

Goeth to Jesus, wounded, slain, + 

And maketh him her home, + 

Whence she will not go out again, + 

And where death cannot come. + 

I do not fear the wilderness + 

Where thou hast been before; + 

Nay rather will I daily press + 

After thee, near thee, more! + 

Thou art my food; on thee I lean, + 

Thou makest my heart sing; + 

And to thy heavenly pastures green + 

All thy dear flock dost bring. + 

And if the gate that opens there + 

Be dark to other men, + 

It is not dark to those who share + 

The heart of Jesus then: + 

That is not losing much of life + 

Which is not losing thee, + 

Who art as present in the strife + 

As in the victory. + 

Therefore how happy is the time + 

When in thy love I rest! + 

When from my weariness I climb + 

Even to thy tender breast! + 

The night of sorrow endeth there⁠— + 

Thou art brighter than the sun! + 

And in thy pardon and thy care + 

The heaven of heaven is won! + 

No Sign + 

O Lord, if on the wind, at cool of day, + 

I heard one whispered word of mighty grace; + 

If through the darkness, as in bed I lay, + 

But once had come a hand upon my face; + 

If but one sign that might not be mistook + 

Had ever been, since first thy face I sought, + 

I should not now be doubting o’er a book, + 

But serving thee with burning heart and thought. + 

So dreams that heart. But to my heart I say, + 

Turning my face to front the dark and wind: + 

Such signs had only barred anew his way + 

Into thee, longing heart, thee, wildered mind. + 

They asked the very Way, where lies the way? + 

The very Son, where is the Father’s face? + 

How he could show himself, if not in clay, + 

Who was the lord of spirit, form, and space! + 

My being, Lord, will nevermore be whole + 

Until thou come behind mine ears and eyes, + 

Enter and fill the temple of my soul + 

With perfect contact⁠—such a sweet surprise, + 

Such presence as, before it met the view, + 

The prophet-fancy could not once foresee, + 

Though every corner of the temple knew + 

By very emptiness its need of thee. + 

When I keep all thy words, no favoured some, + 

Heedless of worldly winds or judgment’s tide, + 

Then, Jesus, thou wilt with thy father come⁠— + 

Oh, ended prayers!⁠—and in my soul abide. + 

Ah, long delay! ah, cunning, creeping sin! + 

I shall but fail, and cease at length to try: + 

O Jesus, though thou wilt not yet come in, + 

Knock at my window as thou passest by! + 

The Chrysalis + 

Methought I floated sightless, nor did know + 

That I had ears until I heard the cry + 

As of a mighty man in agony: + 

“How long, Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? + 

The arrows of thy lightning through me go, + 

And sting and torture me⁠—yet here I lie + 

A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh!” + 

The darkness thinned; I saw a thing below + 

Like sheeted corpse, a knot at head and feet. + 

Slow clomb the sun the mountains of the dead, + 

And looked upon the world: the silence broke! + 

A blinding struggle! then the thunderous beat + 

Of great exulting pinions stroke on stroke! + 

And from that world a mighty angel fled. + 

November, 1851 + 

What dost thou here, O soul, + 

Beyond thy own control, + 

Under the strange wild sky? + 

O stars, reach down your hands, + 

And clasp me in your silver bands, + 

I tremble with this mystery!⁠— + 

Flung hither by a chance + 

Of restless circumstance, + 

Thou art but here, and wast not sent; + 

Yet once more mayest thou draw + 

By thy own mystic law + 

To the centre of thy wonderment. + 

Why wilt thou stop and start? + 

Draw nearer, oh my heart, + 

And I will question thee most wistfully; + 

Gather thy last clear resolution + 

To look upon thy dissolution. + 

The great God’s life throbs far and free, + 

And thou art but a spark + 

Known only in thy dark, + 

Or a foam-fleck upon the awful ocean, + 

Thyself thy slender dignity, + 

Thy own thy vexing mystery, + 

In the vast change that is not change but motion. + 

’Tis not so hard as it would seem; + 

Thy life is but a dream⁠— + 

And yet thou hast some thoughts about the past; + 

Let go, let go thy memories, + 

They are not things but wandering cries⁠— + 

Wave them each one a long farewell at last: + 

I hear thee say⁠—“Take them, O tide, + 

And I will turn aside, + 

Gazing with heedlessness, nay, even with laughter! + 

Bind me, ye winds and storms, + 

Among the things that once had forms, + 

And carry me clean out of sight thereafter!” + 

Thou hast lived long enough + 

To know thy own weak stuff, + 

Laughing thy fondest joys to utter scorn; + 

Give up the idle strife⁠— + 

It is but mockery of life; + 

The fates had need of thee and thou wast born! + 

They are, in sooth, but thou shalt die. + 

O wandering spark! O homeless cry! + 

O empty will, still lacking self-intent! + 

Look up among the autumn trees: + 

The ripened fruits fall through the breeze, + 

And they will shake thee even like these + 

Into the lap of an Accomplishment! + 

Thou hadst a faith, and voices said:⁠— + 

“Doubt not that truth, but bend thy head + 

Unto the God who drew thee from the night:” + 

Thou liftedst up thy eyes⁠—and, lo! + 

A host of voices answered⁠—“No; + 

A thousand things as good have seen the light!” + 

Look how the swarms arise + 

From every clod before thy eyes! + 

Are thine the only hopes that fade and fall + 

When to the centre of its action + 

One purpose draws each separate fraction, + 

And nothing but effects are left at all? + 

Aha, thy faith! what is thy faith? + 

The sleep that waits on coming death⁠— + 

A blind delirious swoon that follows pain. + 

“True to thy nature!”⁠—well! right well! + 

But what that nature is thou canst not tell⁠— + 

It has a thousand voices in thy brain. + 

Danced all the leaflets to and fro? + 

—Thy feet have trod them long ago! + 

Sprung the glad music up the blue? + 

—The hawk hath cut the song in two. + 

All the mountains crumble, + 

All the forests fall, + 

All thy brethren stumble, + 

And rise no more at all! + 

In the dim woods there is a sound + 

When the winds begin to moan; + 

It is not of joy or yet of mirth, + 

But the mournful cry of our mother Earth, + 

As she calleth back her own. + 

Through the rosy air to-night + 

The living creatures play + 

Up and down through the rich faint light⁠— + 

None so happy as they! + 

But the blast is here, and noises fall + 

Like the sound of steps in a ruined hall, + 

An icy touch is upon them all, + 

And they sicken and fade away. + 

The child awoke with an eye of gladness, + 

With a light on his head and a matchless grace, + 

And laughed at the passing shades of sadness + 

That chased the smiles on his mother’s face; + 

And life with its lightsome load of youth + 

Swam like a boat on a shining lake⁠— + 

Freighted with hopes enough, in sooth, + 

But he lived to trample on joy and truth, + 

And change his crown for a murder-stake! + 

Oh, a ruddy light went through the room, + 

Till the dark ran out to his mother Night! + 

And that little chamber showed through the gloom + 

Like a Noah’s ark with its nest of light! + 

Right glad was the maiden there, I wis, + 

With the youth that held her hand in his! + 

Oh, sweet were the words that went and came + 

Through the light and shade of the leaping flame + 

That glowed on the cheerful faces! + 

So human the speech, so sunny and kind, + 

That the darkness danced on the wall behind, + 

And even the wail of the winter wind + 

Sang sweet through the window-cases! + 

But a mournful wail crept round and round, + 

And a voice cried:⁠—“Come!” with a dreary sound, + 

And the circle wider grew; + 

The light flame sank, and sorrow fell + 

On the faces of those that loved so well; + 

Darker and wilder grew the tone; + 

Fainter and fainter the faces shone; + 

The wild night clasped them, and they were gone⁠— + 

And thou art passing too! + 

Lo, the morning slowly springs + 

Like a meek white babe from the womb of night! + 

One golden planet sits and stings + 

The shifting gloom with his point of light! + 

Lo, the sun on its throne of flame! + 

—Wouldst thou climb and win a crown? + 

Oh, many a heart that pants for the same + 

Falls to the earth ere he goes down! + 

Thy heart is a flower with an open cup⁠— + 

Sit and watch, if it pleaseth thee, + 

Till the melting twilight fill it up + 

With a crystal of tender sympathy; + 

So, gently will it tremble + 

The silent midnight through, + 

And flocks of stars assemble + 

By turns in its depths of dew;⁠— + 

But look! oh, look again! + 

After the driving wind and rain! + 

When the day is up and the sun is strong, + 

And the voices of men are loud and long, + 

When the flower hath slunk to its rest again, + 

And love is lost in the strife of men! + 

Let the morning break with thoughts of love, + 

And the evening fall with dreams of bliss⁠— + 

So vainly panteth the prisoned dove + 

For the depths of her sweet wilderness; + 

So stoops the eagle in his pride + 

From his rocky nest ere the bow is bent; + 

So sleeps the deer on the mountain-side + 

Ere the howling pack hath caught the scent! + 

The fire climbs high till its work is done; + 

The stalk falls down when the flower is gone; + 

And the stars of heaven when their course is run + 

Melt silently away! + 

There was a footfall on the snow, + 

A line of light on the ocean-flow, + 

And a billow’s dash on the rocks below + 

That stand by the wintry bay:⁠— + 

The snow was gone on the coming night; + 

Another wave arose in his might, + 

Uplifted his foaming breast of white, + 

And died like the rest for aye! + 

Oh, the stars were bright! and thyself in thee + 

Yearned for an immortality! + 

And the thoughts that drew from thy busy brain + 

Clasped the worlds like an endless chain⁠— + 

When a moon arose, and her moving chime + 

Smote on thy soul, like a word in time, + 

Or a breathless wish, or a thought in rime, + 

And the truth that looked so gloomy and high + 

Leapt to thy arms with a joyful cry! + 

But what wert thou when a soulless Cause + 

Opened the book of its barren laws, + 

And thy spirit that was so glad and free + 

Was caught in the gin of necessity, + 

And a howl arose from the strife of things + 

Vexing each other with scorpion stings? + 

What wert thou but an orphan child + 

Thrust from the door when the night was wild? + 

Or a sailor on the toiling main + 

Looking blindly up through the wind and rain + 

As the hull of the vessel fell in twain! + 

Seals are on the book of fate, + 

Hands may not unbind it; + 

Eyes may search for truth till late, + 

But will never find it⁠—! + 

Rising on the brow of night + 

Like a portent of dismay, + 

As the worlds in wild affright + 

Track it on its direful way; + 

Resting like a rainbow bar + 

Where the curve and level meet, + 

As the children chase it far + 

O’er the sands with blistered feet; + 

Sadly through the mist of ages + 

Gazing on this life of fear, + 

Doubtful shining on its pages, + 

Only seen to disappear! + 

Sit thee by the sounding shore + 

—Winds and waves of human breath!⁠— + 

Learn a lesson from their roar, + 

Swelling, bursting evermore: + 

Live thy life and die thy death! + 

Die not like the writhing worm, + 

Rise and win thy highest stake; + 

Better perish in the storm + 

Than sit rotting on the lake! + 

Triumph in thy present youth, + 

Pulse of fire and heart of glee; + 

Leap at once into the truth, + 

If there is a truth for thee. + 

Shapeless thoughts and dull opinions, + 

Slow distinctions and degrees⁠— + 

Vex not thou thy weary pinions + 

With such leaden weights as these⁠— + 

Through this mystic jurisdiction + 

Reaching out a hand by chance, + 

Resting on a dull conviction + 

Whetted but by ignorance; + 

Living ever to behold + 

Mournful eyes that watch and weep; + 

Spirit suns that flashed in gold + 

Failing from the vasty deep; + 

Starry lights that glowed like Truth + 

Gazing with unnumbered eyes, + 

Melting from the skies of youth, + 

Swallowed up of mysteries; + 

Cords of love that sweetly bound thee; + 

Faded writing on thy brow; + 

Presences that came around thee; + 

Hands of faith that fail thee now! + 

Groping hands will ever find thee + 

In the night with loads of chains! + 

Lift thy fetters and unbind thee, + 

Cast thee on the midnight plains: + 

Shapes of vision all-providing⁠— + 

Famished cheeks and hungry cries! + 

Sound of crystal waters sliding⁠— + 

Thirsty lips and bloodshot eyes! + 

Empty forms that send no gleaming + 

Through the mystery of this strife!⁠— + 

Oh, in such a life of seeming, + 

Death were worth an endless life! + 

Hark the trumpet of the ocean + 

Where glad lands were wont to be! + 

Many voices of commotion + 

Break in tumult over thee! + 

Lo, they climb the frowning ages, + 

Marching o’er their level lands! + 

Far behind the strife that rages + 

Silence sits with clasped hands; + 

Undivided Purpose, freeing + 

His own steps from hindrances, + 

Sending out great floods of being, + 

Bathes thy steps in silentness. + 

Sit thee down in mirth and laughter⁠— + 

One there is that waits for thee; + 

If there is a true hereafter + 

He will lend thee eyes to see. + 

Like a snowflake gently falling + 

On a quiet fountain, + 

Or a weary echo calling + 

From a distant mountain, + 

Drop thy hands in peace⁠— + 

Fail⁠—falter⁠—cease. + 

Of One Who Died in Spring + 

Loosener of springs, he died by thee! + 

Softness, not hardness, sent him home; + 

He loved thee⁠—and thou mad’st him free + 

Of all the place thou comest from! + 

An Autumn Song + 

Are the leaves falling round about + 

The churchyard on the hill? + 

Is the glow of autumn going out? + 

Is that the winter chill? + 

And yet through winter’s noise, no doubt + 

The graves are very still! + 

Are the woods empty, voiceless, bare? + 

On sodden leaves do you tread? + 

Is nothing left of all those fair? + 

Is the whole summer fled? + 

Well, so from this unwholesome air + 

Have gone away these dead! + 

The seasons pierce me; like a leaf + 

I feel the autumn blow, + 

And tremble between nature’s grief + 

And the silent death below. + 

O Summer, thou art very brief! + 

Where do these exiles go? + 

Triolet + 

Few in Joy’s Sweet Riot + 

Few in joy’s sweet riot + 

Able are to listen: + 

Thou, to make me quiet, + 

Quenchest the sweet riot, + 

Tak’st away my diet, + 

Puttest me in prison⁠— + 

Quenchest joy’s sweet riot + 

That the heart may listen. + 

I See Thee Not + 

Yes, Master, when thou comest thou shalt find + 

A little faith on earth, if I am here! + 

Thou know’st how oft I turn to thee my mind. + 

How sad I wait until thy face appear! + 

Hast thou not ploughed my thorny ground full sore, + 

And from it gathered many stones and sherds? + 

Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more⁠— + 

Then sow thy mustard-seed, and send thy birds. + 

I love thee, Lord; and if I yield to fears, + 

Nor trust with triumph that pale doubt defies, + 

Remember, Lord, ’tis nigh two thousand years, + 

And I have never seen thee with mine eyes! + 

And when I lift them from the wondrous tale, + 

See, all about me hath so strange a show! + 

Is that thy river running down the vale? + 

Is that thy wind that through the pines doth blow? + 

Could’st thou right verily appear again, + 

The same who walked the paths of Palestine, + 

And here in England teach thy trusting men + 

In church and field and house, with word and sign? + 

Here are but lilies, sparrows, and the rest! + 

My hands on some dear proof would light and stay! + 

But my heart sees John leaning on thy breast, + 

And sends them forth to do what thou dost say. + 

A Broken Prayer + 

O Lord, my God, how long + 

Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy? + 

How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear + 

The murmur of Truth’s crystal waters slide + 

From the deep caverns of their endless being, + 

But my lips taste not, and the grosser air + 

Choke each pure inspiration of thy will? + 

I am a denseness ’twixt me and the light; + 

1 cannot round myself; my purest thought, + 

Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth, + 

And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will. + 

I would be a wind + 

Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing, + 

All busy with the pulsing life that throbs + 

To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing + 

That has relation to a changeless truth, + 

Could I but be instinct with thee⁠—each thought + 

The lightning of a pure intelligence, + 

And every act as the loud thunder-clap + 

Of currents warring for a vacuum. + 

Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe; + 

Purge me with sorrow; I will bend my head + 

And let the nations of thy waves pass over, + 

Bathing me in thy consecrated strength; + 

And let thy many-voiced and silver winds + 

Pass through my frame with their clear influence, + 

O save me; I am blind; lo, thwarting shapes + 

Wall up the void before, and thrusting out + 

Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon + 

Down to the night of all unholy thoughts. + 

Oh, when at midnight one of thy strong angels + 

Stems back the waves of earthly influence + 

That shape unsteady continents around me, + 

And they draw off with the devouring gush + 

Of exile billows that have found a home, + 

Leaving me islanded on unseen points, + 

Hanging ’twixt thee and chaos⁠—I have seen + 

Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, + 

And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, + 

Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; + 

And Godhead, with its crown of many stars, + 

Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, + 

And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, + 

Has seemed the shadowed image of a self! + 

Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find + 

And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps + 

Of desolation. + 

O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well + 

Clad round with its own rank luxuriance; + 

A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for, + 

Sinking the lustre of its arrowy finger + 

Through the long grass its own strange virtue + 

Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: + 

Make me a broad strong river coming down + 

With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts + 

Throb forth the joy of their stability + 

In watery pulses from their inmost deeps; + 

And I shall be a vein upon thy world, + 

Circling perpetual from the parent deep. + 

Most mighty One, + 

Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good; + 

Help me to wall each sacred treasure round + 

With the firm battlements of special action. + 

Alas, my holy happy thoughts of thee + 

Make not perpetual nest within my soul, + 

But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoop + 

The trailing glories of their sunward speed + 

For one glad moment, filling my blasted boughs + 

With the sunshine of their wings. Make me a forest + 

Of gladdest life wherein perpetual spring + 

Lifts up her leafy tresses in the wind. + 

Lo, now I see + 

Thy trembling starlight sit among my pines, + 

And thy young moon slide down my arching boughs + 

With a soft sound of restless eloquence! + 

And I can feel a joy as when thy hosts + 

Of trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands, + 

Roar upward through the blue and flashing day + 

Round my still depths of uncleft solitude. + 

Hear me, O Lord, + 

When the black night draws down upon my soul, + 

And voices of temptation darken down + 

The misty wind, slamming thy starry doors + 

With bitter jests:⁠—“Thou fool!” they seem to say, + 

“Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; all + 

Thy nature hath been stung right through and through; + 

Thy sin hath blasted thee and made thee old; + 

Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it dead, + 

And with the fulsome garniture of life + 

Built out the loathsome corpse; thou art a child + 

Of night and death, even lower than a worm; + 

Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self, + 

And with what resolution thou hast left + 

Fall on the damned spikes of doom!” + 

Oh, take me like a child, + 

If thou hast made me for thyself, my God, + 

And lead me up thy hills. I shall not fear, + 

So thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sin + 

With the terrors of thine eye: it fears me not + 

As once it might have feared thine own good image, + 

But lays bold siege at my heart’s doors. + 

Oh, I have seen a thing of beauty stand + 

In the young moonlight of its upward thoughts, + 

And the old earth came round it with its gifts + 

Of gladness, whispering leaves, and odorous plants, + 

Until its large and spiritual eye + 

Burned with intensest love: my God, I could + 

Have watched it evermore with Argus-eyes, + 

Lest when the noontide of the summer’s sun + 

Let down the tented sunlight on the plain, + 

His flaming beams should scorch my darling flower; + 

And through the fruitless nights of leaden gloom, + 

Of plashing rains, and knotted winds of cold, + 

Yea, when thy lightnings ran across the sky, + 

And the loud stumbling blasts fell from the hills + 

Upon the mounds of death, I could have watched + 

Guarding such beauty like another life! + 

But, O my God, it changed!⁠— + 

Yet methinks I know not if it was not I! + 

Its beauty turned to ghastly loathsomeness! + 

Then a hand spurned me backwards from the clouds, + 

And with the gather of a mighty whirlwind, + 

Drew in the glittering gifts of life. + 

How long, O Lord, how long? + 

I am a man lost in a rocky place! + 

Lo, all thy echoes smite me with confusion + 

Of varied speech⁠—the cry of vanished Life + 

Rolled upon nations’ sighs⁠—of hearts uplifted + 

Against despair⁠—the stifled sounds of Woe + 

Sitting perpetual by its grey cold well⁠— + 

Or wasted Toil climbing its endless hills + 

With quickening gasps⁠—or the thin winds of Joy + 

That beat about the voices of the crowd! + 

Lord, hast thou sent + 

Thy moons to mock us with perpetual hope? + 

Lighted within our breasts the love of love + 

To make us ripen for despair, my God? + 

Oh, dost thou hold each individual soul + 

Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose? + 

Or does thine inextinguishable will + 

Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand + 

Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space + 

With mixing thought⁠—drinking up single life + 

As in a cup? and from the rending folds + 

Of glimmering purpose, do all thy navied stars + 

Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, + 

Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, + 

Hung like a dewdrop in thy grassy ways, + 

Drawn up again into the rack of change + 

Even through the lustre which created it? + 

—O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through + 

With scorching wrath, because my spirit stands + 

Bewildered in thy circling mysteries! + 

Oh lift the burdened gloom that chokes my soul + 

With dews of darkness; smite the lean winds of death + 

That run with howls around the ruined temples, + 

Blowing the souls of men about like leaves. + 

Lo, the broad life-lands widen overhead, + 

Star-galaxies arise like drifting snow, + 

And happy life goes whitening down the stream + 

Of boundless action, whilst my fettered soul + 

Sits, as a captive in a noisome dungeon + 

Watches the pulses of his withered heart + 

Lave out the sparkling minutes of his life + 

On the idle flags! + 

Come in the glory of thine excellence, + 

Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light, + 

And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels + 

Burn through the cracks of night! So slowly, Lord, + 

To lift myself to thee with hands of toil, + 

Climbing the slippery cliffs of unheard prayer! + 

Lift up a hand among my idle days⁠— + 

One beckoning finger: I will cast aside + 

The clogs of earthly circumstance and run + 

Up the broad highways where the countless worlds + 

Sit ripening in the summer of thy love. + 

Send a clear meaning sparkling through the years; + 

Burst all the prison-doors, and make men’s hearts + 

Gush up like fountains with thy melody; + 

Brighten the hollow eyes; fill with life’s fruits + 

The hands that grope and scramble down the wastes; + 

And let the ghastly troops of withered ones + 

Come shining o’er the mountains of thy love. + 

Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening down + 

Upon my head like snowflakes, shutting out + 

The happy upper fields with chilly vapour. + 

Shall I content my soul with a weak sense + 

Of safety? or feed my ravenous hunger with + 

Sore purged hopes, that are not hopes but fears + 

Clad in white raiment? + 

The creeds lie in the hollow of men’s hearts + 

Like festering pools glassing their own corruption; + 

The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval, + 

And answer not when thy bright starry feet + 

Move on the watery floors: oh, shake men’s souls + 

Together like the gathering of all oceans + 

Rent from their hidden chambers, till the waves + 

Lift up their million voices of high joy + 

Along the echoing cliffs! come thus, O Lord, + 

With nightly gifts of stars, and lay a hand + 

Of mighty peace upon the quivering flood. + 

O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee? + 

I am a child lost in a mighty forest; + 

The air is thick with voices, and strange hands + 

Reach through the dusk, and pluck me by the skirts. + 

There is a voice which sounds like words from home, + 

But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems + 

To leap from rock to rock: oh, if it is + 

Willing obliquity of sense, descend, + 

Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, + 

And lead me homeward through the shadows. + 

Let me not by my wilful acts of pride + 

Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow + 

A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on + 

Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth + 

And leaden confidence. + 

Come Down + 

Still am I haunting + 

Thy door with my prayers; + 

Still they are panting + 

Up thy steep stairs! + 

Wouldst thou not rather + 

Come down to my heart, + 

And there, O my Father, + 

Be what thou art? + 

A Thanksgiving for F. D. Maurice + 

The veil hath lifted and hath fallen; and him + 

Who next it stood before us, first so long, + 

We see not; but between the cherubim + 

The light burns clearer: come⁠—a thankful song! + 

Lord, for thy prophet’s calm commanding voice, + 

For his majestic innocence and truth, + 

For his unswerving purity of choice, + 

For all his tender wrath and plenteous ruth; + 

For his obedient, wise, clear-listening care + 

To hear for us what word The Word would say, + 

For all the trembling fervency of prayer + 

With which he led our souls the prayerful way; + 

For all the heavenly glory of his face + 

That caught the white Transfiguration’s shine + 

And cast on us the reflex of thy grace⁠— + 

Of all thy men late left, the most divine; + 

For all his learning, and the thought of power + 

That seized thy one Idea everywhere, + 

Brought the eternal down into the hour, + 

And taught the dead thy life to claim and share; + 

For his humility, dove-clear of guile;⁠— + 

The sin denouncing, he, like thy great Paul, + 

Still claimed in it the greatest share, the while + 

Our eyes, love-sharpened, saw him best of all! + 

For his high victories over sin and fear, + 

The captive hope his words of truth set free; + 

For his abiding memory, holy, dear; + 

Last, for his death and hiding now in thee, + 

We praise, we magnify thee, Lord of him: + 

Thou hast him still; he ever was thine own; + 

Nor shall our tears prevail the path to dim + 

That leads where, lowly still, he haunts thy throne. + 

When thou, O Lord, ascendedst up on high + 

Good gifts thou sentest down to cheer thy men: + 

Lo, he ascends!⁠—we follow with the cry, + 

His spirit send thou back in thine again. + 

A Mood + 

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight; + 

My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine; + 

My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light + 

Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine. + 

The Carpenter + 

O Lord, at Joseph’s humble bench + 

Thy hands did handle saw and plane; + 

Thy hammer nails did drive and clench, + 

Avoiding knot and humouring grain. + 

That thou didst seem, thou wast indeed, + 

In sport thy tools thou didst not use; + 

Nor, helping hind’s or fisher’s need, + 

The labourer’s hire, too nice, refuse. + 

Lord, might I be but as a saw, + 

A plane, a chisel, in thy hand!⁠— + 

No, Lord! I take it back in awe, + 

Such prayer for me is far too grand. + 

I pray, O Master, let me lie, + 

As on thy bench the favoured wood; + 

Thy saw, thy plane, thy chisel ply, + 

And work me into something good. + 

No, no; ambition, holy-high, + 

Urges for more than both to pray: + 

Come in, O gracious Force, I cry⁠— + 

O workman, share my shed of clay. + 

Then I, at bench, or desk, or oar, + 

With knife or needle, voice or pen, + 

As thou in Nazareth of yore, + 

Shall do the Father’s will again. + 

Thus fashioning a workman rare, + 

O Master, this shall be thy fee: + 

Home to thy father thou shall bear + 

Another child made like to thee. + 

The Old Garden + 

I stood in an ancient garden + 

With high red walls around; + 

Over them grey and green lichens + 

In shadowy arabesque wound. + 

The topmost climbing blossoms + 

On fields kine-haunted looked out; + 

But within were shelter and shadow, + 

With daintiest odours about. + 

There were alleys and lurking arbours, + 

Deep glooms into which to dive. + 

The lawns were as soft as fleeces, + 

Of daisies I counted but five. + 

The sun-dial was so aged + 

It had gathered a thoughtful grace; + 

’Twas the round-about of the shadow + 

That so had furrowed its face. + 

The flowers were all of the oldest + 

That ever in garden sprung; + 

Red, and blood-red, and dark purple + 

The rose-lamps flaming hung. + 

Along the borders fringed + 

With broad thick edges of box + 

Stood foxgloves and gorgeous poppies + 

And great-eyed hollyhocks. + 

There were junipers trimmed into castles, + 

And ash-trees bowed into tents; + 

For the garden, though ancient and pensive, + 

Still wore quaint ornaments. + 

It was all so stately fantastic + 

Its old wind hardly would stir; + 

Young Spring, when she merrily entered, + 

Scarce felt it a place for her. + 

I stood in the summer morning + 

Under a cavernous yew; + 

The sun was gently climbing, + 

And the scents rose after the dew. + 

I saw the wise old mansion, + 

Like a cow in the noon-day heat, + 

Stand in a lake of shadows + 

That rippled about its feet. + 

Its windows were oriel and latticed, + 

Lowly and wide and fair; + 

And its chimneys like clustered pillars + 

Stood up in the thin blue air. + 

White doves, like the thoughts of a lady, + 

Haunted it all about; + 

With a train of green and blue comets + 

The peacock went marching stout. + 

The birds in the trees were singing + 

A song as old as the world, + 

Of love and green leaves and sunshine, + 

And winter folded and furled. + 

They sang that never was sadness + 

But it melted and passed away; + 

They sang that never was darkness + 

But in came the conquering day. + 

And I knew that a maiden somewhere, + 

In a low oak-panelled room, + 

In a nimbus of shining garments, + 

An aureole of white-browed bloom, + 

Looked out on the garden dreamy, + 

And knew not it was old; + 

Looked past the gray and the sombre, + 

Saw but the green and the gold, + 

I stood in the gathering twilight, + 

In a gently blowing wind; + 

Then the house looked half uneasy, + 

Like one that was left behind. + 

The roses had lost their redness, + 

And cold the grass had grown; + 

At roost were the pigeons and peacock, + 

The sun-dial seemed a head-stone. + 

The world by the gathering twilight + 

In a gauzy dusk was clad; + 

Something went into my spirit + 

And made me a little sad. + 

Grew and gathered the twilight, + 

It filled my heart and brain; + 

The sadness grew more than sadness, + 

It turned to a gentle pain. + 

Browned and brooded the twilight, + 

Pervaded, absorbed the calm, + 

Till it seemed for some human sorrows + 

There could not be any balm. + 

Then I knew that, up a staircase + 

Which untrod will yet creak and shake, + 

Deep in a distant chamber + 

A ghost was coming awake⁠— + 

In the growing darkness growing, + 

Growing till her eyes appear + 

Like spots of a deeper twilight, + 

But more transparent clear: + 

Thin as hot air up-trembling, + 

Thin as sun-molten crape, + 

An ethereal shadow of something + 

Is taking a certain shape; + 

A shape whose hands hang listless, + 

Let hang its disordered hair; + 

A shape whose bosom is heaving + 

But draws not in the air. + 

And I know, what time the moonlight + 

On her nest of shadows will sit, + 

Out on the dim lawn gliding + 

That shadowy shadow will flit. + 

The moon is dreaming upward + 

From a sea of cloud and gleam; + 

She looks as if she had seen me + 

Never but in a dream. + 

Down the stair I know she is coming, + 

Bare-footed, lifting her train; + 

It creaks not⁠—she hears it creaking + 

Where once there was a brain. + 

Out at yon side-door she’s coming, + 

With a timid glance right and left; + 

Her look is hopeless yet eager, + 

The look of a heart bereft. + 

Across the lawn she is flitting, + 

Her thin gown feels the wind; + 

Are her white feet bending the grasses? + 

Her hair is lifted behind! + 

Shall I stay to look on her nearer? + 

Would she start and vanish away? + 

Oh, no, she will never see me, + 

Stand I near as I may! + 

It is not this wind she is feeling, + 

Not this cool grass below; + 

’Tis the wind and the grass of an evening + 

A hundred years ago. + 

She sees no roses darkling, + 

No stately hollyhocks dim; + 

She is only thinking and dreaming + 

The garden, the night, and him, + 

The unlit windows behind her, + 

The timeless dial-stone, + 

The trees, and the moon, and the shadows + 

A hundred years agone! + 

’Tis a night for a ghostly lover + 

To haunt the best-loved spot: + 

Is he come in his dreams to this garden? + 

I gaze, but I see him not. + 

I will not look on her nearer, + 

My heart would be torn in twain; + 

From my eyes the garden would vanish + 

In the falling of their rain. + 

I will not look on a sorrow + 

That darkens into despair, + 

On the surge of a heart that cannot + 

Yet cannot cease to bear. + 

My soul to hers would be calling: + 

She would hear no word it said! + 

If I cried aloud in the stillness + 

She would never turn her head! + 

She is dreaming the sky above her, + 

She is dreaming the earth below:⁠— + 

This night she lost her lover + 

A hundred years ago. + 

A Noonday Melody + 

Everything goes to its rest; + 

The hills are asleep in the noon; + 

And life is as still in its nest + 

As the moon when she looks on a moon + 

In the depth of a calm river’s breast + 

As it steals through a midnight in June. + 

The streams have forgotten the sea + 

In the dream of their musical sound; + 

The sunlight is thick on the tree, + 

And the shadows lie warm on the ground⁠— + 

So still, you may watch them and see + 

Every breath that awakens around. + 

The churchyard lies still in the heat, + 

With its handful of mouldering bone, + 

As still as the long stalk of wheat + 

In the shadow that sits by the stone, + 

As still as the grass at my feet + 

When I walk in the meadows alone. + 

The waves are asleep on the main, + 

And the ships are asleep on the wave; + 

And the thoughts are as still in my brain + 

As the echo that sleeps in the cave; + 

All rest from their labour and pain⁠— + 

Then why should not I in my grave? + 

Who Lights the Fire? + 

Who lights the fire⁠—that forth so gracefully + 

And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke? + 

Some pretty one who never felt the yoke⁠— + 

Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she. + 

Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be! + 

Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke; + 

But puritan, nor rogue in virtue’s cloke, + 

Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly! + 

Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter out + 

For all the blue smoke’s pantomimic gesture⁠— + 

His name or nature, sex or age or vesture! + 

The fire was lit by human care, no doubt⁠— + 

But now the smoke is Nature’s tributary, + 

Dancing ’twixt man and nothing like a fairy. + 

Who Would Have Thought? + 

Who would have thought that even an idle song + 

Were such a holy and celestial thing + 

That wickedness and envy cannot sing⁠— + 

That music for no moment lives with wrong? + 

I know this, for a very grievous throng, + 

Dark thoughts, low wishes, round my bosom cling, + 

And, underneath, the hidden holy spring + 

Stagnates because of their enchantment strong. + 

Blow, breath of heaven, on all this poison blow! + 

And, heart, glow upward to this gracious breath! + 

Between them, vanish, mist of sin and death, + 

And let the life of life within me flow! + 

Love is the green earth, the celestial air, + 

And music runs like dews and rivers there! + 

On a December Day + 

This is the sweetness of an April day; + 

The softness of the spring is on the face + 

Of the old year. She has no natural grace, + 

But something comes to her from far away + 

Out of the Past, and on her old decay + 

The beauty of her childhood you can trace.⁠— + 

And yet she moveth with a stormy pace, + 

And goeth quickly.⁠—Stay, old year, oh, stay! + 

We do not like new friends, we love the old; + 

With young, fierce, hopeful hearts we ill agree; + 

But thou art patient, stagnant, calm, and cold, + 

And not like that new year that is to be;⁠— + 

Life, promise, love, her eyes may fill, fair child! + 

We know the past, and will not be beguiled. + 

Yet the free heart will not be captive long; + 

And if she changes often, she is free. + 

But if she changes: One has mastery + 

Who makes the joy the last in every song. + 

And so to-day I blessed the breezes strong + 

That swept the blue; I blessed the breezes free + 

That rolled wet leaves like rivers shiningly; + 

I blessed the purple woods I stood among. + 

“And yet the spring is better!” Bitterness + 

Came with the words, but did not stay with them. + 

“Accomplishment and promise! field and stem + 

New green fresh growing in a fragrant dress! + 

And we behind with death and memory!” + 

—Nay, prophet-spring! but I will follow thee. + 

Christmas Day, 1850 + 

Beautiful stories wed with lovely days + 

Like words and music:⁠—what shall be the tale + 

Of love and nobleness that might avail + 

To express in action what this sweetness says⁠— + 

The sweetness of a day of airs and rays + 

That are strange glories on the winter pale? + 

Alas, O beauty, all my fancies fail! + 

I cannot tell a story in thy praise! + 

Thou hast, thou hast one⁠—set, and sure to chime + 

With thee, as with the days of “winter wild;” + 

For Joy like Sorrow loves his blessed feet + 

Who shone from Heaven on Earth this Christmas-time + 

A Brother and a Saviour, Mary’s child!⁠— + 

And so, fair day, thou hast thy story sweet. + 

To a February Primrose + 

I know not what among the grass thou art, + 

Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower, + 

Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power + 

To send thine image through them to the heart; + 

But when I push the frosty leaves apart + 

And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower + 

Thou growest up within me from that hour, + 

And through the snow I with the spring depart. + 

I have no words. But fragrant is the breath, + 

Pale beauty, of thy second life within. + 

There is a wind that cometh for thy death, + 

But thou a life immortal dost begin, + 

Where in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell + 

Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable! + 

In February + 

Now in the dark of February rains, + 

Poor lovers of the sunshine, spring is born, + 

The earthy fields are full of hidden corn, + 

And March’s violets bud along the lanes; + 

Therefore with joy believe in what remains. + 

And thou who dost not feel them, do not scorn + 

Our early songs for winter overworn, + 

And faith in God’s handwriting on the plains. + 

“Hope” writes he, “Love” in the first violet, + 

“Joy,” even from Heaven, in songs and winds and trees; + 

And having caught the happy words in these + 

While Nature labours with the letters yet, + 

Spring cannot cheat us, though her hopes be broken, + 

Nor leave us, for we know what God hath spoken. + 

The True + 

I envy the tree-tops that shake so high + 

In winds that fill them full of heavenly airs; + 

I envy every little cloud that shares + 

With unseen angels evening in the sky; + 

I envy most the youngest stars that lie + 

Sky-nested, and the loving heaven that bears, + 

And night that makes strong worlds of them unawares; + 

And all God’s other beautiful and nigh! + 

Nay, nay, I envy not! And these are dreams, + 

Fancies and images of real heaven! + 

My longings, all my longing prayers are given + 

For that which is, and not for that which seems. + 

Draw me, O Lord, to thy true heaven above, + 

The Heaven of thy Thought, thy Rest, thy Love. + 

The Dwellers Therein + 

Down a warm alley, early in the year, + 

Among the woods, with all the sunshine in + 

And all the winds outside it, I begin + 

To think that something gracious will appear, + 

If anything of grace inhabit here, + 

Or there be friendship in the woods to win. + 

Might one but find companions more akin + 

To trees and grass and happy daylight clear, + 

And in this wood spend one long hour at home! + 

The fairies do not love so bright a place, + 

And angels to the forest never come, + 

But I have dreamed of some harmonious race, + 

The kindred of the shapes that haunt the shore + 

Of Music’s flow and flow for evermore. + 

Autumn’s Gold + 

Along the tops of all the yellow trees, + 

The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies; + 

And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise + 

Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses; + 

And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze, + 

Cometh more joy of light for Poet’s eyes⁠— + 

Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies, + 

And shining houses and blue distances. + 

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore + 

That make the western river-beds so bright, + 

The briar and the furze are all alight! + 

Perhaps the year will be so fair no more, + 

But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay, + 

And autumn old has shone into a Day! + 

Punishment + 

Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness, + 

Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell; + 

Say, “God is angry, and I earned it well⁠— + 

I would not have him smile on wickedness:” + 

Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less:⁠— + 

“God rules at least, I find as prophets tell, + 

And proves it in this prison!”⁠—then thy cell + 

Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness. + 

—“A prison⁠—and yet from door and window-bar + 

I catch a thousand breaths of his sweet air! + 

Even to me his days and nights are fair! + 

He shows me many a flower and many a star! + 

And though I mourn and he is very far, + 

He does not kill the hope that reaches there!” + 

Show Us the Father + 

“Show us the Father.” Chiming stars of space, + 

And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers, + 

A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours⁠— + 

A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace. + 

And, looking out from sweetest Nature’s face, + 

From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers, + 

Infinite love and beauty, all the hours, + 

Woo men that love them with divinest grace; + 

And to the depths of all the answering soul + 

High Justice speaks, and calls the world her own; + 

And yet we long, and yet we have not known + 

The very Father’s face who means the whole! + 

Show us the Father! Nature, conscience, love + 

Revealed in beauty, is there One above? + 

The Pinafore + 

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred + 

To fretful tears for crossed desires, + 

Obedient to his mother’s word + 

My child to banishment retires. + 

As disappears the moon, when wind + 

Heaps miles of mist her visage o’er, + 

So vanisheth his face behind + 

The cloud of his white pinafore. + 

I cannot then come near my child⁠— + 

A gulf between of gainful loss; + 

He to the infinite exiled⁠— + 

I waiting, for I cannot cross. + 

Ah then, what wonder, passing show, + 

The Isis-veil behind it brings⁠— + 

Like that self-coffined creatures know, + 

Remembering legs, foreseeing wings! + 

Mysterious moment! When or how + 

Is the bewildering change begun? + 

Hid in far deeps the awful now + 

When turns his being to the sun! + 

A light goes up behind his eyes, + 

A still small voice behind his ears; + 

A listing wind about him sighs, + 

And lo the inner landscape clears! + 

Hid by that screen, a wondrous shine + 

Is gathering for a sweet surprise; + 

As Moses grew, in dark divine, + 

Too radiant for his people’s eyes. + 

For when the garment sinks again, + 

Outbeams a brow of heavenly wile, + 

Clear as a morning after rain, + 

And sunny with a perfect smile. + 

Oh, would that I the secret knew + 

Of hiding from my evil part, + 

And turning to the lovely true + 

The open windows of my heart! + 

Lord, in thy skirt, love’s tender gaol, + 

Hide thou my selfish heart’s disgrace; + 

Fill me with light, and then unveil + 

To friend and foe a friendly face. + 

The Prism + 

A pool of broken sunbeams lay + 

Upon the passage-floor, + 

Radiant and rich, profound and gay + 

As ever diamond bore. + 

Small, flitting hands a handkerchief + 

Spread like a cunning trap: + 

Prone lay the gorgeous jewel-sheaf + 

In the glory-gleaner’s lap! + 

Deftly she folded up the prize, + 

With lovely avarice; + 

Like one whom having had made wise, + 

She bore it off in bliss. + 

But ah, when for her prisoned gems + 

She peeped, to prove them there, + 

No glories broken from their stems + 

Lay in the kerchief bare! + 

For still, outside the nursery door, + 

The bright persistency, + 

A molten diadem on the floor, + 

Lay burning wondrously. + 

How oft have I laid fold from fold + 

And peered into my mind⁠— + 

To see of all the purple and gold + 

Not one gleam left behind! + 

The best of gifts will not be stored: + 

The manna of yesterday + 

Has filled no sacred miser-hoard + 

To keep new need away. + 

Thy grace, O Lord, it is thyself; + 

Thy presence is thy light; + 

I cannot lay it on my shelf, + 

Or take it from thy sight. + 

For daily bread we daily pray⁠— + 

The want still breeds the cry; + 

And so we meet, day after day, + 

Thou, Father in heaven, and I. + 

Is my house dreary, wall and floor, + 

Will not the darkness flit, + 

I go outside my shadowy door + 

And in thy rainbow sit. + 

Sleep + 

Oh! is it Death that comes + 

To have a foretaste of the whole? + 

To-night the planets and the stars + 

Will glimmer through my window-bars + 

But will not shine upon my soul! + 

For I shall lie as dead + 

Though yet I am above the ground; + 

All passionless, with scarce a breath, + 

With hands of rest and eyes of death, + 

I shall be carried swiftly round. + 

Or if my life should break + 

The idle night with doubtful gleams, + 

Through mossy arches will I go, + 

Through arches ruinous and low, + 

And chase the true and false in dreams. + 

Why should I fall asleep? + 

When I am still upon my bed + 

The moon will shine, the winds will rise + 

And all around and through the skies + 

The light clouds travel o’er my head! + 

O busy, busy things, + 

Ye mock me with your ceaseless life! + 

For all the hidden springs will flow + 

And all the blades of grass will grow + 

When I have neither peace nor strife. + 

And all the long night through + 

The restless streams will hurry by; + 

And round the lands, with endless roar, + 

The white waves fall upon the shore, + 

And bit by bit devour the dry. + 

Even thus, but silently, + 

Eternity, thy tide shall flow, + 

And side by side with every star + 

Thy long-drawn swell shall bear me far, + 

An idle boat with none to row. + 

My senses fail with sleep; + 

My heart beats thick; the night is noon; + 

And faintly through its misty folds + 

I hear a drowsy clock that holds + 

Its converse with the waning moon. + 

Oh, solemn mystery + 

That I should be so closely bound + 

With neither terror nor constraint, + 

Without a murmur of complaint, + 

And lose myself upon such ground! + 

Sharing + 

On the far horizon there + 

Heaps of cloudy darkness rest; + 

Though the wind is in the air + 

There is stupor east and west. + 

For the sky no change is making, + 

Scarce we know it from the plain; + 

Droop its eyelids never waking, + 

Blinded by the misty rain; + 

Save on high one little spot, + 

Round the baffled moon a space + 

Where the tumult ceaseth not: + 

Wildly goes the midnight race! + 

And a joy doth rise in me + 

Upward gazing on the sight, + 

When I think that others see + 

In yon clouds a like delight; + 

How perchance an aged man + 

Struggling with the wind and rain, + 

In the moonlight cold and wan + 

Feels his heart grow young again; + 

As the cloudy rack goes by, + 

How the life-blood mantles up + 

Till the fountain deep and dry + 

Yields once more a sparkling cup. + 

Or upon the gazing child + 

Cometh down a thought of glory + 

Which will keep him undefiled + 

Till his head is old and hoary. + 

For it may be he hath woke + 

And hath raised his fair young form; + 

Strangely on his eyes have broke + 

All the splendours of the storm; + 

And his young soul forth doth leap + 

With the storm-clouds in the moon; + 

And his heart the light will keep + 

Though the vision passeth soon. + 

Thus a joy hath often laughed + 

On my soul from other skies, + 

Bearing on its wings a draught + 

From the wells of Paradise, + 

For that not to me alone + 

Comes a splendour out of fear; + 

Where the light of heaven hath shone + 

There is glory far and near. + 

In Bonds + 

Of the poor bird that cannot fly + 

Kindly you think and mournfully; + 

For prisoners and for exiles all + 

You let the tears of pity fall; + 

And very true the grief should be + 

That mourns the bondage of the free. + 

The soul⁠—she has a fatherland; + 

Binds her not many a tyrant’s hand? + 

And the winged spirit has a home, + 

But can she always homeward come? + 

Poor souls, with all their wounds and foes, + 

Will you not also pity those? + 

Hunger + 

Father, I cry to thee for bread + 

With hungred longing, eager prayer; + 

Thou hear’st, and givest me instead + 

More hunger and a half-despair. + 

O Lord, how long? My days decline, + 

My youth is lapped in memories old; + 

I need not bread alone, but wine⁠— + 

See, cup and hand to thee I hold! + 

And yet thou givest: thanks, O Lord, + 

That still my heart with hunger faints! + 

The day will come when at thy board + 

I sit, forgetting all my plaints. + 

If rain must come and winds must blow, + 

And I pore long o’er dim-seen chart, + 

Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go, + 

And keep the faintness at my heart. + 

To the Clouds + 

Through the unchanging heaven, as ye have sped, + 

Speed onward still, a strange wild company, + 

Fleet children of the waters! Glorious ye, + 

Whether the sun lift up his shining head, + 

High throned at noontide and established + 

Among the shifting pillars, or we see + 

The sable ghosts of air sleep mournfully + 

Against the sunlight, passionless and dead! + 

Take thus a glory, oh thou higher Sun, + 

From all the cloudy labour of man’s hand⁠— + 

Whether the quickening nations rise and run, + 

Or in the market-place we idly stand + 

Casting huge shadows over these thy plains⁠— + 

Even thence, O God, draw thy rich gifts of rains. + 

New Year’s Eve: A Waking Dream + 

I have not any fearful tale to tell + 

Of fabled giant or of dragon-claw, + 

Or bloody deed to pilfer and to sell + 

To those who feed, with such, a gaping maw; + 

But what in yonder hamlet there befell, + 

Or rather what in it my fancy saw, + 

I will declare, albeit it may seem + 

Too simple and too common for a dream. + 

Two brothers were they, and they sat alone + 

Without a word, beside the winter’s glow; + 

For it was many years since they had known + 

The love that bindeth brothers, till the snow + 

Of age had frozen it, and it had grown + 

An icy-withered stream that would not flow; + 

And so they sat with warmth about their feet + 

And ice about their hearts that would not beat. + 

And yet it was a night for quiet hope:⁠— + 

A night the very last of all the year + 

To many a youthful heart did seem to ope + 

An eye within the future, round and clear; + 

And age itself, that travels down the slope, + 

Sat glad and waiting as the hour drew near, + 

The dreamy hour that hath the heaviest chime, + 

Jerking our souls into the coming time. + 

But they!⁠—alas for age when it is old! + 

The silly calendar they did not heed; + 

Alas for age when in its bosom cold + 

There is not warmth to nurse a bladed weed! + 

They thought not of the morrow, but did hold + 

A quiet sitting as their hearts did feed + 

Inwardly on themselves, as still and mute + 

As if they were a-cold from head to foot. + 

O solemn kindly night, she looketh still + 

With all her moon upon us now and then! + 

And though she dwelleth most in craggy hill, + 

She hath an eye unto the hearts of men! + 

So past a corner of the window-sill + 

She thrust a long bright finger just as ten + 

Had struck, and on the dial-plate it came, + 

Healing each hour’s raw edge with tender flame. + 

There is a something in the winds of heaven + 

That stirreth purposely and maketh men; + 

And unto every little wind is given + 

A thing to do ere it is still again; + 

So when the little clock had struck eleven, + 

The edging moon had drawn her silver pen + 

Across a mirror, making them aware + 

Of something ghostlier than their own grey hair. + 

Therefore they drew aside the window-blind + 

And looked upon the sleeping town below, + 

And on the little church which sat behind + 

As keeping watch upon the scanty row + 

Of steady tombstones⁠—some of which inclined + 

And others upright, in the moon did show + 

Like to a village down below the waves⁠— + 

It was so still and cool among the graves. + 

But not a word from either mouth did fall, + 

Except it were some very plain remark. + 

Ah! why should such as they be glad at all? + 

For years they had not listened to the lark! + 

The child was dead in them!⁠—yet did there crawl + 

A wish about their hearts; and as the bark + 

Of distant sheep-dog came, they were aware + 

Of a strange longing for the open air. + 

Ah! many an earthy-weaving year had spun + 

A web of heavy cloud about their brain! + 

And many a sun and moon had come and gone + 

Since they walked arm in arm, these brothers twain! + 

But now with timed pace their feet did stun + 

The village echoes into quiet pain: + 

The street appeared very short and white, + 

And they like ghosts unquiet for the light. + 

“Right through the churchyard,” one of them did say + 

—I knew not which was elder of the two⁠— + 

“Right through the churchyard is our better way.” + 

“Ay,” said the other, “past the scrubby yew. + 

I have not seen her grave for many a day; + 

And it is in me that with moonlight too + 

It might be pleasant thinking of old faces, + 

And yet I seldom go into such places.” + 

Strange, strange indeed to me the moonlight wan + 

Sitting about a solitary stone! + 

Stranger than many tales it is to scan + 

The earthy fragment of a human bone; + 

But stranger still to see a grey old man + 

Apart from all his fellows, and alone + 

With the pale night and all its giant quiet; + 

Therefore that stone was strange and those two by it. + 

It was their mother’s grave, and here were hid + 

The priceless pulses of a mother’s soul. + 

Full sixty years it was since she had slid + 

Into the other world through that deep hole. + 

But as they stood it seemed the coffin-lid + 

Grew deaf with sudden hammers!⁠—’twas the mole + 

Niddering about its roots.⁠—Be still, old men, + 

Be very still and ye will hear again. + 

Ay, ye will hear it! Ye may go away, + 

But it will stay with you till ye are dead! + 

It is but earthy mould and quiet clay, + 

But it hath power to turn the oldest head. + 

Their eyes met in the moon, and they did say + 

More than a hundred tongues had ever said. + 

So they passed onwards through the rapping wicket + 

Into the centre of a firry thicket. + 

It was a solemn meeting of Earth’s life, + 

An inquest held upon the death of things; + 

And in the naked north full thick and rife + 

The snow-clouds too were meeting as on wings + 

Shorn round the edges by the frost’s keen knife; + 

And the trees seemed to gather into rings, + 

Waiting to be made blind, as they did quail + 

Among their own wan shadows thin and pale. + 

Many strange noises are there among trees, + 

And most within the quiet moony light, + 

Therefore those aged men are on their knees + 

As if they listened somewhat:⁠—Ye are right⁠— + 

Upwards it bubbles like the hum of bees! + 

Although ye never heard it till to-night, + 

The mighty mother calleth ever so + 

To all her pale-eyed children from below. + 

Ay, ye have walked upon her paven ways, + 

And heard her voices in the market-place, + 

But ye have never listened what she says + 

When the snow-moon is pressing on her face! + 

One night like this is more than many days + 

To him who hears the music and the bass + 

Of deep immortal lullabies which calm + 

His troubled soul as with a hushing psalm. + 

I know not whether there is power in sleep + 

To dim the eyelids of the shining moon, + 

But so it seemed then, for still more deep + 

She grew into a heavy cloud, which, soon + 

Hiding her outmost edges, seemed to keep + 

A pressure on her; so there came a swoon + 

Among the shadows, which still lay together + 

But in their slumber knew not one another. + 

But while the midnight groped for the chime + 

As she were heavy with excess of dreams, + 

She from the cloud’s thick web a second time + 

Made many shadows, though with minished beams; + 

And as she looked eastward through the rime + 

Of a thin vapour got of frosty steams, + 

There fell a little snow upon the crown + 

Of a near hillock very bald and brown. + 

And on its top they found a little spring, + 

A very helpful little spring indeed, + 

Which evermore unwound a tiny string + 

Of earnest water with continual speed⁠— + 

And so the brothers stood and heard it sing; + 

For all was snowy-still, and not a seed + 

Had struck, and nothing came but noises light + 

Of the continual whitening of the night. + 

There is a kindness in the falling snow⁠— + 

It is a grey head to the spring time mild; + 

So as the creamy vapour bowed low + 

Crowning the earth with honour undefiled, + 

Within each withered man arose a glow + 

As if he fain would turn into a child: + 

There was a gladness somewhere in the ground + 

Which in his bosom nowhere could be found! + 

Not through the purple summer or the blush + 

Of red voluptuous roses did it come + 

That silent speaking voice, but through the slush + 

And snowy quiet of the winter numb! + 

It was a barren mound that heard the gush + 

Of living water from two fountains dumb⁠— + 

Two rocky human hearts which long had striven + 

To make a pleasant noise beneath high heaven! + 

Now from the village came the onward shout + 

Of lightsome voices and of merry cheer; + 

It was a youthful group that wandered out + 

To do obeisance to the glad new year; + 

And as they passed they sang with voices stout + 

A song which I was very fain to hear, + 

But as they darkened on, away it died, + 

And the two men walked homewards side by side. + 

Death + 

Mourn Not, My Friends, That We Are Growing Old + 

Mourn not, my friends, that we are growing old: + 

A fresher birth brings every new year in. + 

Years are Christ’s napkins to wipe off the sin. + 

See now, I’ll be to you an angel bold! + 

My plumes are ruffled, and they shake with cold, + 

Yet with a trumpet-blast I will begin. + 

—Ah, no; your listening ears not thus I win! + 

Yet hear, sweet sisters; brothers, be consoled:⁠— + 

Behind me comes a shining one indeed; + 

Christ’s friend, who from life’s cross did take him down, + 

And set upon his day night’s starry crown! + 

“Death,” say’st thou? Nay⁠—thine be no caitiff creed!⁠— + 

A woman-angel! see⁠—in long white gown! + 

The mother of our youth!⁠—she maketh speed. + 

From North Wales: To the Mother + 

When the summer gave us a longer day, + 

And the leaves were thickest, I went away: + 

Like an isle, through dark clouds, of the infinite blue, + 

Was that summer-ramble from London and you. + 

It was but one burst into life and air, + 

One backward glance on the skirts of care, + 

A height on the hills with the smoke below⁠— + 

And the joy that came quickly was quick to go. + 

But I know and I cannot forget so soon + 

How the Earth is shone on by Sun and Moon; + 

How the clouds hide the mountains, and how they move + 

When the morning sunshine lies warm above. + 

I know how the waters fall and run + 

In the rocks and the heather, away from the sun; + 

How they hang like garlands on all hill-sides, + 

And are the land’s music, those crystal tides. + 

I know how they gather in valleys fair, + 

Meet valleys those beautiful waves to bear; + 

How they dance through the rocks, how they rest in the pool, + 

How they darken, how sparkle, and how they are cool. + 

I know how the rocks from their kisses climb + 

To keep the storms off with a front sublime; + 

And how on their platforms and sloping walls + 

The shadow of oak-tree and fir-tree falls. + 

I know how the valleys are bright from far, + 

Rocks, meadows, and waters, the wood and the scaur; + 

And how the roadside and the nearest hill + 

The foxglove and heather and harebell fill. + 

I know⁠—but the joy that was quick to go + 

Gave more knowledge to me than words can show; + 

And you know the story, and how they fare + 

Who love the green earth and the heavenly air. + 

Come to Me + 

Come to me, come to me, O my God; + 

Come to me everywhere! + 

Let the trees mean thee, and the grassy sod, + 

And the water and the air! + 

For thou art so far that I often doubt, + 

As on every side I stare, + 

Searching within, and looking without, + 

If thou canst be anywhere. + 

How did men find thee in days of old? + 

How did they grow so sure? + 

They fought in thy name, they were glad and bold, + 

They suffered, and kept themselves pure! + 

But now they say⁠—neither above the sphere + 

Nor down in the heart of man, + 

But solely in fancy, ambition, and fear + 

The thought of thee began. + 

If only that perfect tale were true + 

Which ages have not made old, + 

Which of endless many makes one anew, + 

And simplicity manifold! + 

But he taught that they who did his word + 

The truth of it sure would know: + 

I will try to do it: if he be lord + 

Again the old faith will glow; + 

Again the old spirit-wind will blow + 

That he promised to their prayer; + 

And obeying the Son, I too shall know + 

His father everywhere! + 

A Fear + 

O Mother Earth, I have a fear + 

Which I would tell to thee⁠— + 

Softly and gently in thine ear + 

When the moon and we are three. + 

Thy grass and flowers are beautiful; + 

Among thy trees I hide; + 

And underneath the moonlight cool + 

Thy sea looks broad and wide; + 

But this I fear⁠—lest thou shouldst grow + 

To me so small and strange, + 

So distant I should never know + 

On thee a shade of change, + 

Although great earthquakes should uplift + 

Deep mountains from their base, + 

And thy continual motion shift + 

The lands upon thy face;⁠— + 

The grass, the flowers, the dews that lie + 

Upon them as before⁠— + 

Driven upwards evermore, lest I + 

Should love these things no more. + 

Even now thou dimly hast a place + 

In deep star galaxies! + 

And I, driven ever on through space, + 

Have lost thee in the skies! + 

The Lost House + 

Out of thy door I run to do the thing + 

That calls upon me. Straight the wind of words + 

Whoops from mine ears the sounds of them that sing + 

About their work, “My God, my father-king!” + 

I turn in haste to see thy blessed door, + 

But, lo, a cloud of flies and bats and birds, + 

And stalking vapours, and vague monster-herds + 

Have risen and lighted, rushed and swollen between! + 

Ah me! the house of peace is there no more. + 

Was it a dream then?⁠—Walls, fireside, and floor, + 

And sweet obedience, loving, calm, and free, + 

Are vanished⁠—gone as they had never been! + 

I labour groaning. Comes a sudden sheen!⁠— + 

And I am kneeling at my father’s knee, + 

Sighing with joy, and hoping utterly. + 

When the cock crows loud from the glen, + 

And the moor-cock chirrs from the heather, + 

What hear ye and see ye then, + 

Ye children of air and ether? + 

1st Echo + 

A thunder as of waves at the rising of the moon, + 

And a darkness on the graves though the day is at its noon. + 

2nd Echo + 

A springing as of grass though the air is damp and chill, + 

And a glimmer from the river that winds about the hill. + 

1st Echo + 

A lapse of crags that leant from the mountain’s earthen sheath, + 

And a shock of ruin sent on the river underneath. + 

2nd Echo + 

A sound as of a building that groweth fair and good, + 

And a piping of the thrushes from the hollow of the wood. + 

1st Echo + 

A wailing as of lambs that have wandered from the flock, + 

And a bleating of their dams that was answered from the rock. + 

2nd Echo + 

A breathing as of cattle in the shadow where they dream, + 

And a sound of children playing with the pebbles in the stream. + 

1st Echo + 

A driving as of clouds in the kingdom of the air, + 

And a tumult as of crowds that mingle everywhere. + 

2nd Echo + 

A waving of the grass, and a passing o’er the lakes, + 

And a shred of tempest-cloud in the glory when it breaks. + 

The Goal + 

In God alone, the perfect end, + 

Wilt thou find thyself or friend. + 

The Healer + 

They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind, + 

The devil-torn, the sick, the sore; + 

Thy heart their well of life they find, + 

Thine ear their open door. + 

Ah, who can tell the joy in Palestine⁠— + 

What smiles and tears of rescued throngs! + 

Their lees of life were turned to wine, + 

Their prayers to shouts and songs! + 

The story dear our wise men fable call, + 

Give paltry facts the mighty range; + 

To me it seems just what should fall, + 

And nothing very strange. + 

But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore, + 

I scarce would care for cure to ask; + 

Another prayer should haunt thy door⁠— + 

Set thee a harder task. + 

If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, + 

Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest! + 

Had ever heart more need of thine, + 

If thine indeed hath rest? + 

Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane + 

That in their bodies death did breed; + 

If thou canst cure my deeper pain + 

Then art thou lord indeed. + 

Oh That a Wind + 

Oh that a wind would call + 

From the depths of the leafless wood! + 

Oh that a voice would fall + 

On the ear of my solitude! + 

Far away is the sea, + 

With its sound and its spirit tone; + 

Over it white clouds flee; + 

But I am alone, alone. + 

Straight and steady and tall + 

The trees stand on their feet; + 

Fast by the old stone wall + 

The moss grows green and sweet; + 

But my heart is full of fears, + 

For the sun shines far away; + 

And they look in my face through tears, + 

And the light of a dying day. + 

My heart was glad last night + 

As I pressed it with my palm; + 

Its throb was airy and light + 

As it sang some spirit psalm; + 

But it died away in my breast + 

As I wandered forth to-day⁠— + 

As a bird sat dead on its nest, + 

While others sang on the spray. + 

O weary heart of mine, + 

Is there ever a Truth for thee? + 

Will ever a sun outshine + 

But the sun that shines on me? + 

Away, away through the air + 

The clouds and the leaves are blown; + 

And my heart hath need of prayer, + 

For it sitteth alone, alone. + 

A Vision of St. Eligius + 

I see thy house, but I am blown about, + 

A wind-mocked kite, between the earth and sky, + 

All out of doors⁠—alas! of thy doors out, + 

And drenched in dews no summer suns can dry. + 

For every blast is passion of my own; + 

The dews cold sweats of selfish agony; + 

Dank vapour steams from memories lying prone; + 

And all my soul is but a stifled cry. + 

Lord, thou dost hold my string, else were I driven + 

Down to some gulf where I were tossed no more, + 

No turmoil telling I was not in heaven, + 

No billows raving on a blessed shore. + 

Thou standest on thy door-sill, calm as day, + 

And all my throbs and pangs are pulls from thee; + 

Hold fast the string, lest I should break away + 

And outer dark and silence swallow me. + 

No longer fly thy kite, Lord; draw me home. + 

Thou pull’st the string through all the distance bleak; + 

Lord, I am nearing thee; O Lord, I come; + 

Thy pulls grow stronger and the wind grows weak. + 

In thy remodelling hands thou tak’st thy kite; + 

A moment to thy bosom hold’st me fast. + 

Thou flingest me abroad:⁠—lo, in thy might + 

A strong-winged bird I soar on every blast! + 

Of the Son of Man + 

I honour Nature, holding it unjust + 

To look with jealousy on her designs; + 

With every passing year more fast she twines + 

About my heart; with her mysterious dust + 

Claim I a fellowship not less august + 

Although she works before me and combines + 

Her changing forms, wherever the sun shines + 

Spreading a leafy volume on the crust + 

Of the old world; and man himself likewise + 

Is of her making: wherefore then divorce + 

What God hath joined thus, and rend by force + 

Spirit away from substance, bursting ties + 

By which in one great bond of unity + 

God hath together bound all things that be? + 

And in these lines my purpose is to show + 

That He who left the Father, though he came + 

Not with art-splendour or the earthly flame + 

Of genius, yet in that he did bestow + 

His own true loving heart, did cause to grow, + 

Unseen and buried deep, whate’er we name + 

The best in human art, without the shame + 

Of idle sitting in most real woe; + 

And that whate’er of Beautiful and Grand + 

The Earth contains, by him was not despised, + 

But rather was so deeply realized + 

In word and deed, though not with artist hand, + 

That it was either hid or all disguised + 

From those who were not wise to understand. + 

Art is the bond of weakness, and we find + 

Therein acknowledgment of failing power: + 

A man would worship, gazing on a flower⁠— + 

Onward he passeth, lo his eyes are blind! + 

The unenlivened form he left behind + 

Grew up within him only for an hour! + 

And he will grapple with Nature till the dower + 

Of strength shall be retreasured in his mind. + 

And each form-record is a high protest + 

Of treason done unto the soul of man, + 

Which, striving upwards, ever is oppress’d + 

By the old bondage, underneath whose ban + 

He, failing in his struggle for the best, + 

Must live in pain upon what food he can. + 

Moreover, were there perfect harmony + 

’Twixt soul and Nature, we should never waste + 

The precious hours in gazing, but should haste + 

To assimilate her offerings, and we + 

From high life-elements, as doth the tree, + 

Should grow to higher; so what we call Taste + 

Is a slow living as of roots encased + 

In the grim chinks of some sterility + 

Both cramping and withholding. Art is Truth, + 

But Truth dammed up and frozen, gagged and bound + 

As is a streamlet icy and uncouth + 

Which pebbles hath and channel but no sound: + 

Give it again its summer heart of youth + 

And it will be a life upon the ground. + 

And Love had not been prisoned in cold stone, + 

Nor Beauty smeared on the dead canvas so, + 

Had not their worshipper been forced to go + 

Questful and restless through the world alone, + 

Searching but finding not, till on him shone + 

Back from his own deep heart a chilly glow + 

As of a frost-nipped sunbeam, or of snow + 

Under a storm-dodged crescent which hath grown + 

Wasted to mockery; and beneath such gleam + 

His wan conceits have found an utterance, + 

Which, had they found a true and sunny beam, + 

Had ripened into real touch and glance⁠— + 

Nay more, to real deed, the Truth of all, + 

To some perfection high and personal. + 

“But yet the great of soul have ever been + 

The first to glory in all works of art; + 

For from the genius-form would ever dart + 

A light of inspiration, and a sheen + 

As of new comings; and ourselves have seen + 

Men of stern purpose to whose eyes would start + 

Sorrow at sight of sorrow though no heart + 

Did riot underneath that chilly, screen; + 

And hence we judge such utterance native to + 

The human soul⁠—expression highest⁠—best.” + 

—Nay, it is by such sign they will pursue, + 

Albeit unknowing, Beauty, without rest; + 

And failing in the search, themselves will fling + 

Speechless before its shadow, worshipping. + 

And how shall he whose mission is to bring + 

The soul to worship at its rightful shrine, + 

Seeing in Beauty what is most divine, + 

Give out the mightiest impulse, and thus fling + 

His soul into the future, scattering + 

The living seed of wisdom? Shall there shine + 

From underneath his hand a matchless line + 

Of high earth-beauties, till the wide world ring + 

With the far clang that tells a missioned soul, + 

Kneeling to homage all about his feet? + 

Alas for such a gift were this the whole, + 

The only bread of life men had to eat! + 

Lo, I behold them dead about him now, + 

And him the heart of death, for all that brow! + 

If Thou didst pass by Art, thou didst not scorn + 

The souls that by such symbol yearned in vain + 

From Truth and Love true nourishment to gain: + 

On thy warm breast, so chilly and forlorn + 

Fell these thy nurslings little more than born + 

That thou wast anguished, and there fell a rain + 

From thy blest eyelids, and in grief and pain + 

Thou partedst from them yet one night and morn + 

To find them wholesome food and nourishment + 

Instead of what their blindness took for such, + 

Laying thyself a seed in earthen rent + 

From which, outspringing to the willing touch, + 

Riseth for all thy children harvest great, + 

For which they will all learn to bless thee yet. + 

Thou sawest Beauty in the streaking cloud + 

When grief lift up those eyelids; nor in scorn + 

Broke ever on thine eyes the purple morn + 

Along the cedar tops; to thee aloud + 

Spake the night-solitude, when hushed and bowed + 

The earth lay at thy feet stony and worn; + 

Loving thou markedst when the lamb unshorn + 

Was glad before thee, and amongst the crowd + 

Famished and pent in cities did thine eye + 

Read strangest glory⁠—though in human art + 

No record lives to tell us that thy heart + 

Bowed to its own deep beauty: deeper did lie + 

The burden of thy mission, even whereby + 

We know that Beauty liveth where Thou art. + 

Doubtless thine eyes have watched the sun aspire + 

From that same Olivet, when back on thee + 

Flushed upwards after some night-agony + 

Thy proper Godhead, with a purer fire + 

Purpling thy Infinite, and in strong desire + 

Thou sattest in the dawn that was to be + 

Uplifted on our dark perplexity. + 

Yea in thee lay thy soul, a living lyre, + 

And each wild beauty smote it, though the sound + 

Rung to the night-winds oft and desert air; + 

Beneath thine eyes the lily paled more fair, + 

And each still shadow slanting on the ground + 

Lay sweetly on thee as commissioned there, + 

So full wast thou of eyes all round and round. + 

And so thou neededst not our human skill + 

To fix what thus were transient⁠—there it grew + 

Wedded to thy perfection; and anew + 

With every coming vision rose there still + 

Some living principle which did fulfil + 

Thy most legitimate manhood; and unto + 

Thy soul all Nature rendered up its due + 

With not a contradiction; and each hill + 

And mountain torrent and each wandering light + 

Grew out divinely on thy countenance, + 

Whereon, as we are told, by word and glance + 

Thy hearers read an ever strange delight⁠—So + 

strange to them thy Truth, they could not tell + 

What made thy message so unspeakable. + 

And by such living witness didst thou preach: + 

Not with blind hands of groping forward thrust + 

Into the darkness, gathering only dust, + 

But by this real sign⁠—that thou didst reach, + 

In natural order, rising each from each, + 

Thy own ideals of the True and Just; + 

And that as thou didst live, even so he must + 

Who would aspire his fellow-men to teach, + 

Looking perpetual from new heights of Thought + 

On his old self. Of art no scorner thou! + 

Instead of leafy chaplet, on thy brow + 

Wearing the light of manhood, thou hast brought + 

Death unto Life! Above all statues now, + 

Immortal Artist, hail! thy work is wrought! + 

Solemn and icy stand ye in my eyes, + 

Far up into the niches of the Past, + 

Ye marble statues, dim and holden fast + 

Within your stony homes! nor human cries + 

Had shook you from your frozen fantasies + 

Or sent the life-blood through you, till there passed + 

Through all your chilly bulks a new life-blast + 

From the Eternal Living, and ye rise + 

From out your stiffened postures rosy-warm, + 

Walking abroad a goodly company + 

Of living virtues at that wondrous charm, + 

As he with human heart and hand and eye + 

Walked sorrowing upon our highways then, + 

The Eternal Father’s living gift to men! + 

As the pent torrent in uneasy rest + 

Under the griping rocks, doth ever keep + 

A monstrous working as it lies asleep + 

In the round hollow of some mountain’s breast, + 

Till where it hideth in its sweltering nest + 

Some earthquake finds it, and its waters leap + 

Forth to the sunshine down the mighty steep, + 

So in thee once was anguished forth the quest + 

Whereby man sought for life-power as he lay + 

Under his own proud heart and black despair + 

Wedged fast and stifled up with loads of care, + 

Yet at dumb struggle with the tyrant clay; + 

Thou wentest down below the roots of prayer, + 

And he hath cried aloud since that same day! + 

As he that parts in hatred from a friend + 

Mixing with other men forgets the woe + 

Which anguished him when he beheld and lo + 

Two souls had fled asunder which did bend + 

Under the same blue heaven! yet ere the end, + 

When the loud world hath tossed him to and fro, + 

Will often strangely reappear that glow + 

At simplest memory which some chance may send, + 

Although much stronger bonds have lost their power: + 

So thou God-sent didst come in lowly guise, + 

Striking on simple chords⁠—not with surprise + 

Or mightiest recollectings in that hour, + 

But like remembered fragrance of a flower + 

A man with human heart and loving eyes. + 

A Song-Sermon: + 

Job 14:13⁠–⁠15 + 

Rondel + 

Would that thou hid me in the grave + 

And kept me with death’s gaoler-care; + 

Until thy wrath away should wear + 

A sentence fixed thy prisoner gave! + 

I would endure with patience brave + 

So thou remembered I was there! + 

Would that thou hid me in the grave, + 

And kept me with death’s gaoler-care! + 

To see thy creature thou wouldst crave⁠— + 

Desire thy handiwork so fair; + 

Then wouldst thou call through death’s dank air + 

And I would answer from the cave! + 

Would that thou hid me in the grave, + 

And kept me with death’s gaoler-care! + 

Words in the Night + 

I woke at midnight, and my heart, + 

My beating heart, said this to me: + 

Thou seest the moon, how calm and bright! + 

The world is fair by day and night, + 

But what is that to thee? + 

One touch to me, down dips the light + 

Over the land and sea. + 

All is mine, all is my own! + 

Toss the purple fountain high! + 

The breast of man is a vat of stone; + 

I am alive, I, only I! + 

One little touch and all is dark⁠— + 

The winter with its sparkling moons, + 

The spring with all her violets, + 

The crimson dawns and rich sunsets, + 

The autumn’s yellowing noons! + 

I only toss my purple jets, + 

And thou art one that swoons + 

Upon a night of gust and roar, + 

Shipwrecked among the waves, and seems + 

Across the purple hills to roam: + 

Sweet odours touch him from the foam, + 

And downward sinking still he dreams + 

He walks the clover fields at home + 

And hears the rattling teams. + 

All is mine, all is my own! + 

Toss the purple fountain high! + 

The breast of man is a vat of stone; + 

I am alive, I, only I! + 

Thou hast beheld a throated fountain spout + 

Full in the air, and in the downward spray + 

A hovering Iris span the marble tank, + 

Which, as the wind came, ever rose and sank, + 

Violet and red; so my continual play + 

Makes beauty for the Gods with many a prank + 

Of human excellence, while they, + 

Weary of all the noon, in shadows sweet, + 

Supine and heavy-eyed rest in the boundless heat. + 

Let the world’s fountain play! + 

Beauty is pleasant in the eyes of Jove; + 

Betwixt the wavering shadows where he lies + 

He marks the dancing column with his eyes + 

Celestial, and amid his inmost grove + 

Upgathers all his limbs, serenely blest, + 

Lulled by the mellow noise of the great world’s unrest. + 

One heart beats in all nature, differing + 

But in the work it works; its doubts and clamours + 

Are but the waste and brunt of instruments + 

Wherewith a work is done, or as the hammers + 

On forge Cyclopean plied beneath the rents + 

Of lowest Etna, conquering into shape + 

The hard and scattered ore; + 

Choose thou narcotics, and the dizzy grape + 

Outworking passion, lest with horrid crash + 

Thy life go from thee in a night of pain; + 

So tutoring thy vision, shall the flash + 

Of dove white-breasted be to thee no more + 

Than a white stone heavy upon the plain. + 

Hark, the cock crows loud! + 

And without, all ghastly and ill, + 

Like a man uplift in his shroud, + 

The white, white morn is propped on the hill; + 

And adown from the eaves, pointed and chill + 

The icicles ’gin to glitter + 

And the birds with a warble short and shrill + 

Pass by the chamber-window still⁠— + 

With a quick, uneasy twitter! + 

Let me pump warm blood, for the cold is bitter; + 

And wearily, wearily, one by one, + 

Men awake with the weary sun! + 

Life is a phantom shut in thee: + 

I am the master and keep the key; + 

So let me toss thee the days of old + 

Crimson and orange and green and gold; + 

So let me fill thee yet again + 

With a rush of dreams from my spout amain; + 

For all is mine, all is my own: + 

Toss the purple fountain high! + 

The breast of man is a vat of stone, + 

And I am alive, I only, I! + 

Consider the Ravens + 

Lord, according to thy words, + 

I have considered thy birds; + 

And I find their life good, + 

And better the better understood: + 

Sowing neither corn nor wheat + 

They have all that they can eat; + 

Reaping no more than they sow + 

They have more than they could stow; + 

Having neither barn nor store, + 

Hungry again, they eat more. + 

Considering, I see too that they + 

Have a busy life, and plenty of play; + 

In the earth they dig their bills deep + 

And work well though they do not heap; + 

Then to play in the air they are not loath, + 

And their nests between are better than both. + 

But this is when there blow no storms, + 

When berries are plenty in winter, and worms, + 

When feathers are rife, with oil enough⁠— + 

To keep the cold out and send the rain off; + 

If there come, indeed, a long hard frost + 

Then it looks as thy birds were lost. + 

But I consider further, and find + 

A hungry bird has a free mind; + 

He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow, + 

Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow; + 

This moment is his, thy will hath said it, + 

The next is nothing till thou hast made it. + 

Thy bird has pain, but has no fear + 

Which is the worst of any gear; + 

When cold and hunger and harm betide him, + 

He does not take them and stuff inside him; + 

Content with the day’s ill he has got, + 

He waits just, nor haggles with his lot: + 

Neither jumbles God’s will + 

With driblets from his own still. + 

But next I see, in my endeavour, + 

Thy birds here do not live for ever; + 

That cold or hunger, sickness or age + 

Finishes their earthly stage; + 

The rooks drop in cold nights, + 

Leaving all their wrongs and rights; + 

Birds lie here and birds lie there + 

With their feathers all astare; + 

And in thy own sermon, thou + 

That the sparrow falls dost allow. + 

It shall not cause me any alarm, + 

For neither so comes the bird to harm + 

Seeing our father, thou hast said, + 

Is by the sparrow’s dying bed; + 

Therefore it is a blessed place, + 

And the sparrow in high grace. + 

It cometh therefore to this, Lord: + 

I have considered thy word, + 

And henceforth will be thy bird. + 

The Wind of the World + 

Chained is the Spring. The Night-wind bold + 

Blows over the hard earth; + 

Time is not more confused and cold, + 

Nor keeps more wintry mirth. + 

Yet blow, and roll the world about⁠— + 

Blow, Time, blow, winter’s Wind! + 

Through chinks of time heaven peepeth out, + 

And Spring the frost behind. + 

Sabbath Bells + 

Oh holy Sabbath bells, + 

Ye have a pleasant voice! + 

Through all the land your music swells, + 

And man with one commandment tells + 

To rest and to rejoice. + 

As birds rejoice to flee + 

From dark and stormy skies + 

To brighter lands beyond the sea + 

Where skies are calm, and wings are free + 

To wander and to rise; + 

As thirsty travellers sing, + 

Through desert paths that pass, + 

To hear the welcome waters spring, + 

And see, beyond the spray they fling + 

Tall trees and waving grass; + 

So we rejoice to know + 

Your melody begun; + 

For when our paths are parched below + 

Ye tell us where green pastures glow + 

And living waters run. + 

Fighting + 

Here is a temple strangely wrought: + 

Within it I can see + 

Two spirits of a diverse thought + 

Contend for mastery. + 

One is an angel fair and bright, + 

Adown the aisle comes he, + 

Adown the aisle in raiment white, + 

A creature fair to see. + 

The other wears an evil mien, + 

And he hath doubtless slipt, + 

A fearful being dark and lean, + 

Up from the mouldy crypt. + 

Is that the roof that grows so black? + 

Did some one call my name? + 

Was it the bursting thunder crack + 

That filled this place with flame? + 

I move⁠—I wake from out my sleep: + 

Some one hath victor been! + 

I see two radiant pinions sweep, + 

And I am borne between. + 

Beneath the clouds that under roll + 

An upturned face I see⁠— + 

A dead man’s face, but, ah, the soul + 

Was right well known to me! + 

A man’s dead face! Away I haste + 

Through regions calm and fair: + 

Go vanquish sin, and thou shall taste + 

The same celestial air. + 

After the Fashion of an Old Emblem + 

I have long enough been working down in my cellar, + 

Working spade and pick, boring-chisel and drill; + 

I long for wider spaces, airy, clear-dark, and stellar: + 

Successless labour never the love of it did fill. + 

More profit surely lies in a holy, pure quiescence, + 

In a setting forth of cups to catch the heavenly rain, + 

In a yielding of the being to the ever waiting presence, + 

In a lifting of the eyes upward, homeward again! + 

Up to my garret, its storm-windows and skylights! + 

There I’ll lay me on the floor, and patient let the sun, + 

The moon and the stars, the blueness and the twilights + 

Do what their pleasure is, and wait till they have done. + 

But, lo, I hear a waving on the roof of great pinions! + 

’Tis the labour of a windmill, broad-spreading to the wind! + 

Lo, down there goes a shaft through all the house-dominions! + 

I trace it to a cellar, whose door I cannot find. + 

But there I hear ever a keen diamond-drill in motion, + 

Now fast and now slow as the wind sits in the sails, + 

Drilling and boring to the far eternal ocean, + 

The living well of all wells whose water never fails. + 

So now I go no more to the cellar to my labour, + 

But up to my garret where those arms are ever going; + 

There the sky is ever o’er me, and the wind my blessed neighbour, + 

And the prayer-handle ready turns the sails to its blowing. + 

Blow, blow, my blessed wind; oh, keep ever blowing! + 

Keep the great windmill going full and free; + 

So shall the diamond-drill down below keep going + 

Till in burst the waters of God’s eternal sea. + 

George Rolleston + 

Dead art thou? No more dead than was the maid + 

Over whose couch the saving God did stand⁠— + 

“She is not dead but sleepeth,” said, + 

And took her by the hand! + 

Thee knowledge never from Life’s pathway wiled, + 

But following still where life’s great father led, + 

He turned, and taking up his child, + 

Raised thee too from the dead, + 

O living, thou hast passed thy second birth, + 

Found all things new, and some things lovely strange; + 

But thou wilt not forget the earth, + 

Or in thy loving change! + 

A Prayer in Sickness + 

Thou foldest me in sickness; + 

Thou callest through the cloud; + 

I batter with the thickness + 

Of the swathing, blinding shroud: + 

Oh, let me see thy face, + 

The only perfect grace + 

That thou canst show thy child. + 

O father, being-giver, + 

Take off the sickness-cloud; + 

Saviour, my life deliver + 

From this dull body-shroud: + 

Till I can see thy face + 

I am not full of grace, + 

I am not reconciled. + 

Quiet Dead! + 

Quiet, quiet dead, + 

Have ye aught to say + 

From your hidden bed + 

In the earthy clay? + 

Fathers, children, mothers, + 

Ye are very quiet; + 

Can ye shout, my brothers? + 

I would know you by it! + 

Have ye any words + 

That are like to ours? + 

Have ye any birds? + 

Have ye any flowers? + 

Could ye rise a minute + 

When the sun is warm? + 

I would know you in it, + 

I would take no harm. + 

I am half afraid + 

In the ghostly night; + 

If ye all obeyed + 

I should fear you quite. + 

But when day is breaking + 

In the purple east + 

I would meet you waking⁠— + 

One of you at least⁠— + 

When the sun is tipping + 

Every stony block, + 

And the sun is slipping + 

Down the weathercock. + 

Quiet, quiet dead, + 

I will not perplex you; + 

What my tongue hath said + 

Haply it may vex you! + 

Yet I hear you speaking + 

With a quiet speech, + 

As if ye were seeking + 

Better things to teach: + 

“Wait a little longer, + 

Suffer and endure + 

Till your heart is stronger + 

And your eyes are pure⁠— + 

A little longer, brother, + 

With your fellow-men: + 

We will meet each other + 

Otherwhere again.” + 

Let Your Light So Shine + 

Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head + 

A lamp that well might pharos all the lands; + 

Anon the light will neither rise nor spread: + 

Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands! + 

A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp + 

Under a bushel with an earthy smell! + 

Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp, + 

While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell! + 

For me it were enough to be a flower + 

Knowing its root in thee, the Living, hid, + 

Ordained to blossom at the appointed hour, + 

And wake or sleep as thou, my Nature, bid; + 

But hear my brethren in their darkling fright! + 

Hearten my lamp that it may shine abroad + 

Then will they cry⁠—Lo, there is something bright! + 

Who kindled it if not the shining God? + 

Triolet + 

When the Heart Is a Cup + 

When the heart is a cup + 

In the body low lying, + 

And wine, drop by drop + 

Falls into that cup + 

From somewhere high up, + 

It is good to be dying + 

With the heart for a cup + 

In the body low lying. + 

The Souls’ Rising + 

See how the storm of life ascends + 

Up through the shadow of the world! + 

Beyond our gaze the line extends, + 

Like wreaths of vapour tempest-hurled! + 

Grasp tighter, brother, lest the storm + 

Should sweep us down from where we stand, + 

And we may catch some human form + 

We know, amongst the straining band. + 

See! see in yonder misty cloud + 

One whirlwind sweep, and we shall hear + 

The voice that waxes yet more loud + 

And louder still approaching near! + 

Tremble not, brother, fear not thou, + 

For yonder wild and mystic strain + 

Will bring before us strangely now + 

The visions of our youth again! + 

Listen! oh listen! + 

See how its eyeballs roll and glisten + 

With a wild and fearful stare + 

Upwards through the shining air, + 

Or backwards with averted look, + 

As a child were gazing at a book + 

Full of tales of fear and dread, + 

When the thick night-wind came hollow and dead. + 

Round about it, wavering and light. + 

As the moths flock round a candle at night, + 

A crowd of phantoms sheeted and dumb + 

Strain to its words as they shrilly come: + 

Brother, my brother, dost thou hear? + 

They pierce through the tumult sharp and clear! + 

“The rush of speed is on my soul, + 

My eyes are blind with things I see; + 

I cannot grasp the awful whole, + 

I cannot gird the mystery! + 

The mountains sweep like mist away; + 

The great sea shakes like flakes of fire; + 

The rush of things I cannot see + 

Is mounting upward higher and higher! + 

Oh! life was still and full of calm + 

In yonder spot of earthly ground, + 

But now it rolls a thunder-psalm, + 

Its voices drown my ear in sound! + 

Would God I were a child again + 

To nurse the seeds of faith and power; + 

I might have clasped in wisdom then + 

A wing to beat this awful hour! + 

The dullest things would take my marks⁠— + 

They took my marks like drifted snow⁠— + 

God! how the footsteps rise in sparks, + 

Rise like myself and onward go! + 

Have pity, O ye driving things + 

That once like me had human form! + 

For I am driven for lack of wings + 

A shreddy cloud before the storm!” + 

How its words went through me then, + 

Like a long forgotten pang, + 

Till the storm’s embrace again + 

Swept it far with sudden clang!⁠— + 

Ah, methinks I see it still! + 

Let us follow it, my brother, + 

Keeping close to one another, + 

Blessing God for might of will! + 

Closer, closer, side by side! + 

Ours are wings that deftly glide + 

Upwards, downwards, and crosswise + 

Flashing past our ears and eyes, + 

Splitting up the comet-tracks + 

With a whirlwind at our backs! + 

How the sky is blackening! + 

Yet the race is never slackening; + 

Swift, continual, and strong, + 

Streams the torrent slope along, + 

Like a tidal surge of faces + 

Molten into one despair; + 

Each the other now displaces, + 

A continual whirl of spaces; + 

Ah, my fainting eyesight reels + 

As I strive in vain to stare + 

On a thousand turning wheels + 

Dimly in the gloom descending, + 

Faces with each other blending!⁠— + 

Let us beat the vapours back, + 

We are yet upon his track. + 

Didst thou see a spirit halt + 

Upright on a cloudy peak, + 

As the lightning’s horrid fault + 

Smote a gash into the cheek + 

Of the grinning thunder-cloud + 

Which doth still besiege and crowd + 

Upward from the nether pits + 

Where the monster Chaos sits, + 

Building o’er the fleeing rack + 

Roofs of thunder long and black? + 

Yes, I see it! I will shout + 

Till I stop the horrid rout. + 

Ho, ho! spirit-phantom, tell + 

Is thy path to heaven or hell? + 

We would hear thee yet again, + 

What thy standing amongst men, + 

What thy former history, + 

And thy hope of things to be! + 

Wisdom still we gain from hearing: + 

We would know, we would know + 

Whither thou art steering⁠— + 

Unto weal or woe! + 

Ah, I cannot hear it speaking! + 

Yet it seems as it were seeking + 

Through our eyes our souls to reach + 

With a quaint mysterious speech, + 

As with stretched and crossing palms + 

One were tracing diagrams + 

On the ebbing of the beach, + 

Till with wild unmeasured dance + 

All the tiptoe waves advance, + 

Seize him by the shoulder, cover, + 

Turn him up and toss him over: + 

He is vanished from our sight, + 

Nothing mars the quiet night + 

Save a speck of gloom afar + 

Like the ruin of a star! + 

Brother, streams it ever so, + 

Such a torrent tide of woe? + 

Ah, I know not; let us haste + 

Upwards from this dreary waste, + 

Up to where like music flowing + 

Gentler feet are ever going, + 

Streams of life encircling run + 

Round about the spirit-sun! + 

Up beyond the storm and rush + 

With our lesson let us rise! + 

Lo, the morning’s golden flush + 

Meets us midway in the skies! + 

Perished all the dream and strife! + 

Death is swallowed up of Life! + 

Awake! + 

The stars are all watching; + 

God’s angel is catching + 

At thy skirts in the darkness deep! + 

Gold hinges grating, + 

The mighty dead waiting, + 

Why dost thou sleep? + 

Years without number, + 

Ages of slumber, + 

Stiff in the track of the infinite One! + 

Dead, can I think it? + 

Dropt like a trinket, + 

A thing whose uses are done! + 

White wings are crossing, + 

Glad waves are tossing, + 

The earth flames out in crimson and green + 

Spring is appearing, + 

Summer is nearing⁠— + 

Where hast thou been? + 

Down in some cavern, + 

Death’s sleepy tavern, + 

Housing, carousing with spectres of night? + 

There is my right hand! + 

Grasp it full tight and + 

Spring to the light. + 

Wonder, oh, wonder! + 

How the life-thunder + 

Bursts on his ear in horror and dread! + 

Happy shapes meet him; + 

Heaven and earth greet him: + 

Life from the dead! + 

To an Autograph-Hunter + 

Seek not my name⁠—it doth no virtue bear; + 

Seek, seek thine own primeval name to find⁠— + 

The name God called when thy ideal fair + 

Arose in deeps of the eternal mind. + 

When that thou findest, thou art straight a lord + 

Of time and space⁠—art heir of all things grown; + 

And not my name, poor, earthly label-word, + 

But I myself thenceforward am thine own. + 

Thou hearest not? Or hearest as a man + 

Who hears the muttering of a foolish spell? + 

My very shadow would feel strange and wan + 

In thy abode:⁠—I say “No,” and “Farewell.” + 

Thou understandest? Then it is enough; + 

No shadow-deputy shall mock my friend; + 

We walk the same path, over smooth and rough, + 

To meet ere long at the unending end. + 

Second Sight + 

Rich is the fancy which can double back + 

All seeming forms, and from cold icicles + 

Build up high glittering palaces where dwells + 

Summer perfection, moulding all this wrack + 

To spirit symmetry, and doth not lack + 

The power to hear amidst the funeral bells + 

The eternal heart’s wind-melody which swells + 

In whirlwind flashes all along its track! + 

So hath the sun made all the winter mine + 

With gardens springing round me fresh and fair; + 

On hidden leaves uncounted jewels shine; + 

I live with forms of beauty everywhere, + 

Peopling the crumbling waste and icy pool + 

With sights and sounds of life most beautiful. + 

With a Copy of “In Memoriam” + 

To E. M. H. + 

Dear friend, you love the poet’s song, + 

And here is one for your regard. + 

You know the “melancholy bard,” + 

Whose grief is wise as well as strong; + 

Already something understand + 

For whom he mourns and what he sings, + 

And how he wakes with golden strings + 

The echoes of “the silent land;” + 

How, restless, faint, and worn with grief, + 

Yet loving all and hoping all, + 

He gazes where the shadows fall, + 

And finds in darkness some relief; + 

And how he sends his cries across, + 

His cries for him that comes no more, + 

Till one might think that silent shore + 

Full of the burden of his loss; + 

And how there comes sublimer cheer⁠— + 

Not darkness solacing sad eyes, + 

Not the wild joy of mournful cries, + 

But light that makes his spirit clear; + 

How, while he gazes, something high, + 

Something of Heaven has fallen on him, + 

His distance and his future dim + 

Broken into a dawning sky! + 

Something of this, dear friend, you know; + 

And will you take the book from me + 

That holds this mournful melody, + 

And softens grief to sadness so? + 

Perhaps it scarcely suits the day + 

Of joyful hopes and memories clear, + 

When love should have no thought of fear, + 

And only smiles be round your way; + 

Yet from the mystery and the gloom, + 

From tempted faith and conquering trust, + 

From spirit stronger than the dust, + 

And love that looks beyond the tomb, + 

What can there be but good to win, + 

But hope for life, but love for all, + 

But strength whatever may befall?⁠— + 

So for the year that you begin, + 

For all the years that follow this + 

While a long happy life endures, + 

This hope, this love, this strength be yours, + 

And afterwards a larger bliss! + 

May nothing in this mournful song + 

Too much take off your thoughts from time, + 

For joy should fill your vernal prime, + 

And peace your summer mild and long. + 

And may his love who can restore + 

All losses, give all new good things, + 

Like loving eyes and sheltering wings + 

Be round us all for evermore! + 

They Are Blind + 

They are blind, and they are dead: + 

We will wake them as we go; + 

There are words have not been said, + 

There are sounds they do not know: + 

We will pipe and we will sing⁠— + 

With the Music and the Spring + 

Set their hearts a wondering! + 

They are tired of what is old, + 

We will give it voices new; + 

For the half hath not been told + 

Of the Beautiful and True. + 

Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping! + 

Heavy eyes oppressed with weeping! + 

Flashes through the lashes leaping! + 

Ye that have a pleasant voice, + 

Hither come without delay; + 

Ye will never have a choice + 

Like to that ye have to-day: + 

Round the wide world we will go, + 

Singing through the frost and snow + 

Till the daisies are in blow. + 

Ye that cannot pipe or sing, + 

Ye must also come with speed; + 

Ye must come, and with you bring + 

Weighty word and weightier deed⁠— + 

Helping hands and loving eyes! + 

These will make them truly wise⁠— + 

Then will be our Paradise. + 

When the Storm Was Proudest + 

When the storm was proudest, + 

And the wind was loudest, + 

I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below; + 

When the stars were bright, + 

And the ground was white, + 

I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow. + 

Many voices spake⁠— + 

The river to the lake, + 

And the iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea; + 

And every starry spark + 

Made music with the dark, + 

And said how bright and beautiful everything must be. + 

When the sun was setting, + 

All the clouds were getting + 

Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon; + 

Beneath the leafless trees + 

Wrangling in the breeze, + 

I could hardly see them for the leaves of June. + 

When the day had ended, + 

And the night descended, + 

I heard the sound of streams that I heard not through the day, + 

And every peak afar + 

Was ready for a star, + 

And they climbed and rolled around until the morning gray. + 

Then slumber soft and holy + 

Came down upon me slowly, + 

And I went I know not whither, and I lived I know not how; + 

My glory had been banished, + 

For when I woke it vanished; + 

But I waited on its coming, and I am waiting now. + 

Not Understood + 

Tumultuous rushing o’er the outstretched plains; + 

A wildered maze of comets and of suns; + 

The blood of changeless God that ever runs + 

With quick diastole up the immortal veins; + 

A phantom host that moves and works in chains; + 

A monstrous fiction, which, collapsing, stuns + 

The mind to stupor and amaze at once; + 

A tragedy which that man best explains + 

Who rushes blindly on his wild career + 

With trampling hoofs and sound of mailed war, + 

Who will not nurse a life to win a tear, + 

But is extinguished like a falling star;⁠— + 

Such will at times this life appear to me + 

Until I learn to read more perfectly. + 

Hom. Il. V 403 + 

If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, + 

Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem + 

Thou art a coward if thy safety seem + 

To spring too little from a righteous will; + 

For there is nightmare on thee, nor until + 

Thy soul hath caught the morning’s early gleam + 

Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream + 

By painful introversion; rather fill + 

Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth; + 

But see thou cherish higher hope than this⁠— + 

hope hereafter that thou shall be fit + 

Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit + 

Transparent among other forms of youth + 

Who own no impulse save to God and bliss. + 

The Dawn + 

And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know + 

Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost? + 

I am perplexed with thee that thou shouldst cost + 

This earth another turning! All aglow + 

Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show + 

Along far mountain-tops! and I would post + 

Over the breadth of seas, though I were lost + 

In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so + 

Thou earnest ever with this numbing sense + 

Of chilly distance and unlovely light, + 

Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight + 

With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence! + 

I have another mountain-range from whence + 

Bursteth a sun unutterably bright! + 

Galileo + 

“And yet it moves!” Ah, Truth, where wert thou then + 

When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? + 

Wert thou in heaven, and busy with thy hymn + 

When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? + 

Art thou a phantom that deceives! men + 

To their undoing? or dost thou watch him + 

Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim? + 

And wilt thou ever speak to him again? + 

“It moves, it moves! Alas, my flesh was weak! + 

That was a hideous dream! I’ll cry aloud + 

How the green bulk wheels sunward day by day! + 

Ah me! ah me! perchance my heart was proud + 

That I alone should know that word to speak! + 

And now, sweet Truth, shine upon these, I pray.” + 

Subsidy + 

If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, + 

Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain. + 

Others will live in peace, and thou be fain + 

To bargain with despair, and in thy need + 

To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed. + 

These palaces, for thee they stand in vain; + 

Thine is a ruinous hut, and oft the rain + 

Shall drench thee in the midnight; yea, the speed + 

Of earth outstrip thee, pilgrim, while thy feet + 

Move slowly up the heights. Yet will there come + 

Through the time-rents about thy moving cell, + 

Shot from the Truth’s own bow, and flaming sweet, + 

An arrow for despair, and oft the hum + 

Of far-off populous realms where spirits dwell. + 

The Prophet + 

Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start + 

To find thee with us in thine ancient dress, + 

Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness, + 

Empty of all save God and thy loud heart, + 

Nor with like rugged message quick to dart + 

Into the hideous fiction mean and base; + 

But yet, O prophet man, we need not less + 

But more of earnest, though it is thy part + 

To deal in other words, if thou wouldst smite + 

The living Mammon, seated, not as then + 

In bestial quiescence grimly dight, + 

But robed as priest, and honoured of good men + 

Yet thrice as much an idol-god as when + 

He stared at his own feet from morn to night. + 

The Watcher + 

From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze + 

Of eyes unearthly, which go to and fro + 

Upon the people’s tumult, for below + 

The nations smite each other: no amaze + 

Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays + 

Their deep-set contemplation; steadily glow + 

Those ever holier eyeballs, for they grow + 

Liker unto the eyes of one that prays. + 

And if those clasped hands tremble, comes a power + 

As of the might of worlds, and they are holden + 

Blessing above us in the sunrise golden; + 

And they will be uplifted till that hour + 

Of terrible rolling which shall rise and shake + 

This conscious nightmare from us, and we wake. + 

The Beloved Disciple + 

One do I see and twelve; but second there + 

Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one; + 

Not from thy nobler port, for there are none + 

More quiet-featured: some there are who bear + 

Their message on their brows, while others wear + 

A look of large commission, nor will shun + 

The fiery trial, so their work is done; + 

But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer⁠— + 

Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips + 

Seem like the porches of the spirit land; + 

For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by + 

Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye + 

Burns with a vision and apocalypse + 

Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand. + 

A Boanerges too! Upon my heart + 

It lay a heavy hour: features like thine + 

Should glow with other message than the shine + 

Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start + 

That cleaveth horrid gulfs! Awful and swart + 

A moment stoodest thou, but less divine⁠— + 

Brawny and clad in ruin⁠—till with mine + 

Thy heart made answering signals, and apart + 

Beamed forth thy two rapt eyeballs doubly clear + 

And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty, + 

And, though affianced to immortal Beauty, + 

Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil + 

The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale: + 

Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear! + 

The Lily of the Valley + 

There is not any weed but hath its shower, + 

There is not any pool but hath its star; + 

And black and muddy though the waters are + 

We may not miss the glory of a flower, + 

And winter moons will give them magic power + 

To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; + 

And everything hath beauty near and far, + 

And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour! + 

And I, when I encounter on my road + 

A human soul that looketh black and grim, + 

Shall I more ceremonious be than God? + 

Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him + 

Who once beside our deepest woe did bud + 

A patient watching flower about the brim? + 

Evil Influence + 

’Tis not the violent hands alone that bring + 

The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, + 

Although to these full oft the yawning tomb + 

Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, + 

A more immortal agony will cling + 

To the half fashioned sin which would assume + 

Fair Virtue’s garb; the eye that sows the gloom + 

With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring + 

What time the sun of passion burning fierce + 

Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; + 

The bitter word, and the unkindly glance, + 

The crust and canker coming with the years, + 

Are liker Death than arrows and the lance + 

Which through the living heart at once doth pierce. + 

Spoken of Several Philosophers + 

I pray you, all ye men who put your trust + 

In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear, + 

Holding that Nature lives from year to year + 

In one continual round because she must⁠— + 

Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust + 

Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer⁠— + 

A pewter-pot disconsolately clear, + 

Which holds a potful, as is right and just! + 

I will grow clamorous⁠—by the rood, I will, + 

If thus ye use me like a pewter pot! + 

Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot⁠— + 

will not be the lead to hold thy swill, + 

Nor any lead: I will arise and spill + 

Thy silly beverage⁠—spill it piping hot! + 

Nature a Moral Power + 

Nature, to him no message dost thou bear + 

Who in thy beauty findeth not the power + 

To gird himself more strongly for the hour + 

Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare + 

The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear + 

To him who knows thy secret, and, in shower, + 

And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower + 

Where he may rest until the heavens are fair! + 

Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance + 

Of onward movement steady and serene, + 

Where oft, in struggle and in contest keen, + 

His eyes will opened be, and all the dance + 

Of life break on him, and a wide expanse + 

Roll upward through the void, sunny and green. + 

To June + 

Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! + 

For in a season of such wretched weather + 

I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, + 

Although I could not choose but fancy thee + 

Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee + 

Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather + 

Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether + 

Thou shouldst be seen in such a company + 

Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps + 

Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint + 

Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps. + 

But yet I may not chide: fall to thy books⁠— + 

Fall to immediately without complaint⁠— + 

There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks. + 

Summer + 

Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer! + 

We hold thee very dear, as well we may: + 

It is the kernel of the year to-day⁠— + 

All hail to thee! thou art a welcome comer! + 

If every insect were a fairy drummer, + 

And I a fifer that could deftly play, + 

We’d give the old Earth such a roundelay + 

That she would cast all thought of labour from her.⁠— + 

Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? + 

Some sulky, drooping cloud comes pouting up, + 

Stamping its glittering feet along the plain!⁠— + 

Well, I will let that idle fancy drop! + 

Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain! + 

And all the earth shines like a silver cup! + 

On a Midge + 

Whence do ye come, ye creatures? Each of you + 

Is perfect as an angel! wings and eyes + 

Stupendous in their beauty⁠—gorgeous dyes + 

In feathery fields of purple and of blue! + 

Would God I saw a moment as ye do! + 

I would become a molecule in size, + 

Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise + 

Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view + 

The pearly secret which each tiny fly⁠— + 

Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs + 

Hides in its little breast eternally + 

From you, ye prickly, grim philosophers + 

With all your theories that sound so high: + 

Hark to the buz a moment, my good sirs! + 

Steadfast + 

Here stands a giant stone from whose far top + 

Comes down the sounding water: let me gaze + 

Till every sense of man and human ways + 

Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop + 

Into the whirl of time, and without stop + 

Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise + 

To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze + 

My strength returns when I behold thy prop + 

Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack. + 

Surely thy strength is human, and like me + 

Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! + 

And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black⁠— + 

A breezy tuft of grass which I can see + 

Waving serenely from a sunlit crack! + 

Provision + 

Above my head the great pine-branches tower; + 

Backwards and forwards each to the other bends, + 

Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends + 

Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power: + 

Hark to the patter of the coming shower! + 

Let me be silent while the Almighty sends + 

His thunder-word along⁠—but when it ends + 

I will arise and fashion from the hour + 

Words of stupendous import, fit to guard + 

High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave, + 

When the temptation cometh close and hard, + 

Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave + 

Of meaner things⁠—to which I am a slave, + 

If evermore I keep not watch and ward. + 

First Sight of the Sea + 

I do remember how, when very young, + 

I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell + 

As I drew nearer, caught within the spell + 

Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue. + 

How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung + 

With a man in it, and a great wave fell + 

Within a stone’s cast! Words may never tell + 

The passion of the moment, when I flung + 

All childish records by, and felt arise + 

A thing that died no more! An awful power + 

I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes, + 

Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower.⁠— + 

The noise of waters soundeth to this hour + 

When I look seaward through the quiet skies. + 

On the Source of the Arve + 

Hears’t thou the dash of water, loud and hoarse, + 

With its perpetual tidings upward climb, + 

Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime! + 

For not in vain from its portentous source + 

Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force, + 

But from thine ice-toothed caverns, dark as time, + 

At last thou issuest, dancing to the rime + 

Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course + 

Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies! + 

Right to the ocean-plains away, away! + 

Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes + 

Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray + 

Of all her glittering borders flashes high + 

Against the glittering rocks!⁠—oh, haste, and fly! + 

Confidence + 

Lie down upon the ground, thou hopeless one! + 

Press thy face in the grass, and do not speak. + 

Dost feel the green globe whirl? Seven times a week + 

Climbeth she out of darkness to the sun, + 

Which is her God; seven times she doth not shun + 

Awful eclipse, laying her patient cheek + 

Upon a pillow ghost-beset with shriek + 

Of voices utterless, which rave and run + 

Through all the star-penumbra, craving light + 

And tidings of the dawn from East and West. + 

Calmly she sleepeth, and her sleep is blest + 

With heavenly visions, and the joy of Night + 

Treading aloft with moons; nor hath she fright + 

Though cloudy tempests beat upon her breast. + 

Fate + 

Oft, as I rest in quiet peace, am I + 

Thrust out at sudden doors, and madly driven + 

Through desert solitudes, and thunder-riven + 

Black passages which have not any sky: + 

The scourge is on me now, with all the cry + 

Of ancient life that hath with murder striven. + 

How many an anguish hath gone up to heaven, + 

How many a hand in prayer been lifted high + 

When the black fate came onward with the rush + 

Of whirlwind, avalanche, or fiery spume! + 

Even at my feet is cleft a shivering tomb + 

Beneath the waves; or else, with solemn hush + 

The graveyard opens, and I feel a crush + 

As if we were all huddled in one doom! + 

Unrest + 

Comes there, O Earth, no breathing time for thee, + 

No pause upon thy many-chequered lands? + 

Now resting on my bed with listless hands + 

I mourn thee resting not. Continually + 

Hear I the plashing borders of the sea + 

Answer each other from the rocks and sands! + 

Troop all the rivers seawards; nothing stands, + 

But with strange noises hasteth terribly! + 

Loam-eared hyenas go a moaning by; + 

Howls to each other all the bloody crew + 

Of Afric’s tigers! but, O men, from you + 

Comes this perpetual sound more loud and high + 

Than aught that vexes air! I hear the cry + 

Of infant generations rising too! + 

My Two Geniuses + 

One is a slow and melancholy maid; + 

I know riot if she cometh from the skies + 

Or from the sleepy gulfs, but she will rise + 

Often before me in the twilight shade, + 

Holding a bunch of poppies and a blade + 

Of springing wheat: prostrate my body lies + 

Before her on the turf, the while she ties + 

A fillet of the weed about my head; + 

And in the gaps of sleep I seem to hear + 

A gentle rustle like the stir of corn, + 

And words like odours thronging to my ear: + 

“Lie still, beloved⁠—still until the morn; + 

Lie still with me upon this rolling sphere⁠— + 

Still till the judgment; thou art faint and worn.” + 

The other meets me in the public throng; + 

Her hair streams backward from her loose attire; + 

She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire; + 

She points me downward, steadily and long:⁠— + 

“There is thy grave⁠—arise, my son, be strong! + 

Hands are upon thy crown⁠—awake, aspire + 

To immortality; heed not the lyre + 

Of the Enchantress, nor her poppy-song, + 

But in the stillness of the summer calm + 

Tremble for what is Godlike in thy being. + 

Listen a while, and thou shall hear the psalm + 

Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing; + 

And from far battle-fields there comes the neighing + 

Of dreadful onset, though the air is balm.” + 

Maid with the poppies, must I let thee go? + 

Alas, I may not; thou art likewise dear! + 

I am but human, and thou hast a tear + 

When she hath nought but splendour, and the glow + 

Of a wild energy that mocks the flow + 

Of the poor sympathies which keep us here: + 

Lay past thy poppies, and come twice as near, + 

And I will teach thee, and thou too shalt grow; + 

And thou shalt walk with me in open day + 

Through the rough thoroughfares with quiet grace; + 

And the wild-visaged maid shall lead the way, + 

Timing her footsteps to a gentler pace + 

As her great orbs turn ever on thy face, + 

Drinking in draughts of loving help alway. + 

Sudden Calm + 

There is a bellowing in me, as of might + 

Unfleshed and visionless, mangling the air + 

With horrible convulse, as if it bare + 

The cruel weight of worlds, but could not fight + 

With the thick-dropping clods, and could but bite + 

A vapour-cloud! Oh, I will climb the stair + 

Of the great universe, and lay me there + 

Even at the threshold of his gate, despite + 

The tempest, and the weakness, and the rush + 

Of this quick crowding on me!⁠—Oh, I dream! + 

Now I am sailing swiftly, as we seem + 

To do in sleep! and I can hear the gush + 

Of a melodious wave that carries me + 

On, on for ever to eternity! + 

Thou Also + 

Cry out upon the crime, and then let slip + 

The dogs of hate, whose hanging muzzles track + 

The bloody secret; let the welkin crack + 

Reverberating, while ye dance and skip + 

About the horrid blaze! or else ye strip, + 

More secretly, for the avenging rack, + 

Him who hath done the deed, till, oozing black + 

Ye watch the anguish from his nostrils drip, + 

And all the knotted limbs lie quivering! + 

Or, if your hearts disdain such banqueting, + 

With wide and tearless eyes go staring through + 

The murder cells! but think⁠—that, if your knees + 

Bow not to holiness, then even in you + 

Lie deeper gulfs and blacker crimes than these. + 

The Aurora Borealis + 

Now have I grown a sharpness and an edge + 

Unto my future nights, and I will cut + 

Sheer through the ebon gates that yet will shut + 

On every set of day; or as a sledge + 

Drawn over snowy plains; where not a hedge + 

Breaks this Aurora’s dancing, nothing but + 

The one cold Eskimos’ unlikely hut + 

That swims in the broad moonlight! Lo, a wedge + 

Of the clean meteor hath been brightly driven + 

Right home into the fastness of the north! + 

Anon it quickeneth up into the heaven! + 

And I with it have clomb and spreaded forth + 

Upon the crisp and cooling atmosphere! + 

My soul is all abroad: I cannot find it here! + 

The Human + 

Within each living man there doth reside, + 

In some unrifled chamber of the heart, + 

A hidden treasure: wayward as thou art + 

I love thee, man, and bind thee to my side! + 

By that sweet act I purify my pride + 

And hasten onward⁠—willing even to part + 

With pleasant graces: though thy hue is swart, + 

I bear thee company, thou art my guide! + 

Even in thy sinning wise beyond thy ken + 

To thee a subtle debt my soul is owing! + 

I take an impulse from the worst of men + 

That lends a wing unto my onward going; + 

Then let me pay them gladly back again + 

With prayer and love from Faith and Duty flowing! + 

Written on a Stormy Night + 

O wild and dark! a night hath found me now + 

Wherein I mingle with that element + 

Sent madly loose through the wide staring rent + 

In yon tormented branches! I will bow + 

A while unto the storm, and thenceforth grow + 

Into a mighty patience strongly bent + 

Before the unconquering Power which hither sent + 

These winds to fight their battles on my brow!⁠— + 

Again the loud boughs thunder! and the din + 

Licks up my footfall from the hissing earth! + 

But I have found a mighty peace within, + 

And I have risen into a home of mirth! + 

Wildly I climb above the shaking spires, + 

Above the sobbing clouds, up through the steady fires! + 

Reverence Waking Hope + 

A power is on me, and my soul must speak + 

To thee, thou grey, grey man, whom I behold + 

With those white-headed children. I am bold + 

To commune with thy setting, and to wreak + 

My doubts on thy grey hair; for I would seek + 

Thee in that other world, but I am told + 

Thou goest elsewhere and wilt never hold + 

Thy head so high as now. Oh I were weak, + 

Weak even to despair, could I forego + 

The tender vision which will give somehow + 

Thee standing brightly one day even as now! + 

Thou art a very grey old man, and so + 

I may not pass thee darkly, but bestow + 

A look of reverence on thy wrinkled brow. + 

Born of Water + 

Methought I stood among the stars alone, + 

Watching a grey parched orb which onward flew + 

Half blinded by the dusty winds that blew, + 

Empty as Death and barren as a stone, + 

The pleasant sound of water all unknown! + 

When, as I looked in wonderment, there grew, + 

High in the air above, a drop of dew, + 

Which, gathering slowly through long cycles, shone + 

Like a great tear; and then at last it fell + 

Clasping the orb, which drank it greedily, + 

With a delicious noise and upward swell + 

Of sweet cool joy that tossed me like a sea; + 

And then the thick life sprang as from a grave, + 

With trees, flowers, boats upon the bounding wave! + 

To a Thunder-Cloud + 

Oh, melancholy fragment of the night + 

Drawing thy lazy web against the sun, + 

Thou shouldst have waited till the day was done + 

With kindred glooms to build thy fane aright, + 

Sublime amid the ruins of the light! + 

But thus to shape our glories one by one + 

With fearful hands, ere we had well begun + 

To look for shadows⁠—even in the bright! + 

Yet may we charm a lesson from thy breast, + 

A secret wisdom from thy folds of thunder: + 

There is a wind that cometh from the west + 

Will rend thy tottering piles of gloom asunder, + 

And fling thee ruinous along the grass, + 

To sparkle on us as our footsteps pass! + 

Sun and Moon + 

First came the red-eyed sun as I did wake; + 

He smote me on the temples and I rose, + 

Casting the night aside and all its woes; + 

And I would spurn my idleness, and take + 

My own wild journey even like him, and shake + 

The pillars of all doubt with lusty blows, + 

Even like himself when his rich glory goes + 

Right through the stalwart fogs that part and break. + 

But ere my soul was ready for the fight, + 

His solemn setting mocked me in the west; + 

And as I trembled in the lifting night, + 

The white moon met me, and my heart confess’d + 

A mellow wisdom in her silent youth, + 

Which fed my hope with fear, and made my strength a truth. + 

Doubt Heralding Vision + 

An angel saw me sitting by a brook, + 

Pleased with the silence, and the melodies + 

Of wind and water which did fall and rise: + 

He gently stirred his plumes and from them shook + 

An outworn doubt, which fell on me and took + 

The shape of darkness, hiding all the skies, + 

Blinding the sun, but giving to my eyes + 

An inextinguishable wish to look; + 

When, lo! thick as the buds of spring there came, + 

Crowd upon crowd, informing all the sky, + 

A host of splendours watching silently, + 

With lustrous eyes that wept as if in blame, + 

And waving hands that crossed in lines of flame, + 

And signalled things I hope to hold although I die! + 

Life of Death? + 

Is there a secret Joy, that may not weep, + 

For every flower that ends its little span, + 

For every child that groweth up to man, + 

For every captive bird a cage doth keep, + 

For every aching eye that went to sleep + 

Long ages back, when other eyes began + 

To see and know and love as now they can, + 

Unravelling God’s wonders heap by heap? + 

Or doth the Past lie ’mid Eternity + 

In charnel dens that rot and reek alway, + 

A dismal light for those that go astray, + 

A pit of foul deformity⁠—to be, + 

Beauty, a dreadful source of growth for thee + 

When thou wouldst lift thine eyes to greet the day? + 

Lost and Found + 

I missed him when the sun began to bend; + 

I found him not when I had lost his rim; + 

With many tears I went in search of him, + 

Climbing high mountains which did still ascend, + 

And gave me echoes when I called my friend; + 

Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, + 

And high cathedrals where the light was dim, + 

Through books and arts and works without an end, + 

But found him not⁠—the friend whom I had lost. + 

And yet I found him⁠—as I found the lark, + 

A sound in fields I heard but could not mark; + 

I found him nearest when I missed him most; + 

I found him in my heart, a life in frost, + 

A light I knew not till my soul was dark. + 

The Moon + 

She comes! again she comes, the bright-eyed moon! + 

Under a ragged cloud I found her out, + 

Clasping her own dark orb like hope in doubt! + 

That ragged cloud hath waited her since noon, + 

And he hath found and he will hide her soon! + 

Come, all ye little winds that sit without, + 

And blow the shining leaves her edge about, + 

And hold her fast⁠—ye have a pleasant tune! + 

She will forget us in her walks at night + 

Among the other worlds that are so fair! + 

She will forget to look on our despair! + 

She will forget to be so young and bright! + 

Nay, gentle moon, thou hast the keys of light⁠— + 

I saw them hanging by thy girdle there! + 

Truth, Not Form! + 

I came upon a fountain on my way + 

When it was hot, and sat me down to drink + 

Its sparkling stream, when all around the brink + 

I spied full many vessels made of clay, + 

Whereon were written, not without display, + 

In deep engraving or with merely ink, + 

The blessings which each owner seemed to think + 

Would light on him who drank with each alway. + 

I looked so hard my eyes were looking double + 

Into them all, but when I came to see + 

That they were filthy, each in his degree, + 

I bent my head, though not without some trouble, + 

To where the little waves did leap and bubble, + 

And so I journeyed on most pleasantly. + 

God in Growth + 

I said, I will arise and work some thing, + 

Nor be content with growth, but cause to grow + 

A life around me, clear as yes from no, + 

That to my restless hand some rest may bring, + 

And give a vital power to Action’s spring: + 

Thus, I must cease to be! I cried; when, lo! + 

An angel stood beside me on the snow, + 

With folded wings that came of pondering. + 

“God’s glory flashes on the silence here + 

Beneath the moon,” he cried, and upward threw + 

His glorious eyes that swept the utmost blue, + 

“Ere yet his bounding brooks run forth with cheer + 

To bear his message to the hidden year + 

Who cometh up in haste to make his glory new.” + 

In a Churchyard + 

There may be seeming calm above, but no!⁠— + 

There is a pulse below which ceases not, + 

A subterranean working, fiery hot, + 

Deep in the million-hearted bosom, though + 

Earthquakes unlock not the prodigious show + 

Of elemental conflict; and this spot + 

Nurses most quiet bones which lie and rot, + 

And here the humblest weeds take root and grow. + 

There is a calm upon the mighty sea, + 

Yet are its depths alive and full of being, + 

Enormous bulks that move unwieldily; + 

Yet, pore we on it, they are past our seeing!⁠— + 

From the deep sea-weed fields, though wide and ample, + 

Comes there no rushing sound: these do not trample! + 

Power + 

Power that is not of God, however great, + 

Is but the downward rushing and the glare + 

Of a swift meteor that hath lost its share + 

In the one impulse which doth animate + 

The parent mass: emblem to me of fate! + 

Which through vast nightly wastes doth onward fare, + 

Wild-eyed and headlong, rent away from prayer⁠— + 

A moment brilliant, then most desolate! + 

And, O my brothers, shall we ever learn + 

From all the things we see continually + 

That pride is but the empty mockery + 

Of what is strong in man! Not so the stern + 

And sweet repose of soul which we can earn + 

Only through reverence and humility! + 

Death + 

Yes, There Is One Who Makes Us All Lay Down + 

Yes, there is one who makes us all lay down + 

Our mushroom vanities, our speculations, + 

Our well-set theories and calculations, + 

Our workman’s jacket or our monarch’s crown! + 

To him alike the country and the town, + 

Barbaric hordes or civilized nations, + 

Men of all names and ranks and occupations, + 

Squire, parson, lawyer, Jones, or Smith, or Brown! + 

He stops the carter: the uplifted whip + 

Falls dreamily among the horses’ straw; + 

He stops the helmsman, and the gallant ship + 

Holdeth to westward by another law; + 

No one will see him, no one ever saw, + 

But he sees all and lets not any slip. + 

That Holy Thing + 

They all were looking for a king + 

To slay their foes, and lift them high: + 

Thou cam’st a little baby thing + 

That made a woman cry. + 

O son of man, to right my lot + 

Nought but thy presence can avail; + 

Yet on the road thy wheels are not, + 

Nor on the sea thy sail! + 

My fancied ways why shouldst thou heed? + 

Thou com’st down thine own secret stair: + 

Com’st down to answer all my need, + 

Yea, every bygone prayer! + 

What Man Is There of You? + 

The homely words how often read! + 

How seldom fully known! + 

“Which father of you, asked for bread, + 

Would give his son a stone?” + 

How oft has bitter tear been shed, + 

And heaved how many a groan, + 

Because thou wouldst not give for bread + 

The thing that was a stone! + 

How oft the child thou wouldst have fed, + 

Thy gift away has thrown! + 

He prayed, thou heard’st, and gav’st the bread: + 

He cried, “It is a stone!” + 

Lord, if I ask in doubt and dread + 

Lest I be left to moan, + 

Am I not he who, asked for bread, + 

Would give his son a stone? + 

Bell Upon Organ + 

It’s all very well, + 

Said the Bell, + 

To be the big Organ below! + 

But the folk come and go, + 

Said the Bell, + 

And you never can tell + 

What sort of person the Organ will blow! + 

And, besides, it is much at the mercy of the weather + 

For ’tis all made in pieces and glued together! + 

But up in my cell + 

Next door to the sky, + 

Said the Bell, + 

I dwell + 

Very high; + 

And with glorious go + 

I swing to and fro; + 

I swing swift or slow, + 

I swing as I please, + 

With summons or knell; + 

I swing at my ease, + 

Said the Bell: + 

Not the tallest of men + 

Can reach up to touch me, + 

To smirch me or smutch me, + 

Or make me do what + 

I would not be at! + 

And, then, + 

The weather can’t cause me to shrink or increase: + 

I chose to be made in one perfect piece! + 

O Wind of God + 

O wind of God, that blowest in the mind, + 

Blow, blow and wake the gentle spring in me; + 

Blow, swifter blow, a strong warm summer wind, + 

Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see; + 

Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree, + 

And our high-soaring song-larks meet thy dove⁠— + 

High the imperfect soars, descends the perfect love! + 

Blow not the less though winter cometh then; + 

Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen; + 

Let the spring creep into the ground again, + 

The flowers close all their eyes and not be seen: + 

All lives in thee that ever once hath been! + 

Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms; + 

Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my cankerworms. + 

Shall the Dead Praise Thee? + 

I cannot praise thee. By his instrument + 

The master sits, and moves nor foot nor hand; + 

For see the organ-pipes this, that way bent, + 

Leaning, o’erthrown, like wheat-stalks tempest-fanned! + 

I well could praise thee for a flower, a dove, + 

But not for life that is not life in me; + 

Not for a being that is less than love⁠— + 

A barren shoal half lifted from a sea! + 

Unto a land where no wind bloweth ships + 

Thy wind one day will blow me to my own: + 

Rather I’d kiss no more their loving lips + 

Than carry them a heart so poor and prone! + 

I bless thee, Father, thou art what thou art, + 

That thou dost know thyself what thou dost know⁠— + 

A perfect, simple, tender, rhythmic heart, + 

Beating its blood to all in bounteous flow. + 

And I can bless thee too for every smart, + 

For every disappointment, ache, and fear; + 

For every hook thou fixest in my heart, + 

For every burning cord that draws me near. + 

But prayer these wake, not song. Thyself I crave. + 

Come thou, or all thy gifts away I fling. + 

Thou silent, I am but an empty grave: + 

Think to me, Father, and I am a king! + 

My organ-pipes will then stand up awake, + 

Their life soar, as from smouldering wood the blaze; + 

And swift contending harmonies shall shake + 

Thy windows with a storm of jubilant praise. + 

One with Nature + 

I have a fellowship with every shade + 

Of changing nature: with the tempest hour + 

My soul goes forth to claim her early dower + 

Of living princedom; and her wings have stayed + 

Amidst the wildest uproar undismayed! + 

Yet she hath often owned a better power, + 

And blessed the gentle coming of the shower, + 

The speechless majesty of love arrayed + 

In lowly virtue, under which disguise + 

Full many a princely thing hath passed her by; + 

And she from homely intercourse of eyes + 

Hath gathered visions wider than the sky, + 

And seen the withered heart of man arise + 

Peaceful as God, and full of majesty. + 

A Year Song + 

Sighing above, + 

Rustling below, + 

Thorough the woods + 

The winds go. + 

Beneath, dead crowds; + 

Above, life bare; + 

And the besom tempest + 

Sweeps the air: + 

Heart, leave thy woe: + 

Let the dead things go. + 

Through the brown + 

Gold doth push; + 

Misty green + 

Veils the bush. + 

Here a twitter, + 

There a croak! + 

They are coming⁠— + 

The spring-folk! + 

Heart, be not numb; + 

Let the live things come. + 

Through the beech + 

The winds go, + 

With gentle speech, + 

Long and slow. + 

The grass is fine, + 

And soft to lie in: + 

The sun doth shine + 

The blue sky in: + 

Heart, be alive; + 

Let the new things thrive. + 

Round again! + 

Here art thou, + 

A rimy fruit + 

On a bare bough! + 

Winter comes, + 

Winter and snow; + 

And a weary sighing + 

To fall and go! + 

Heart, thy hour shall be; + 

Thy dead will comfort thee. + 

Song + 

Why Do the Houses Stand + 

Why do the houses stand + 

When they that built them are gone; + 

When remaineth even of one + 

That lived there and loved and planned + 

Not a face, not an eye, not a hand, + 

Only here and there a bone? + 

Why do the houses stand + 

When they who built them are gone? + 

Oft in the moonlighted land + 

When the day is overblown, + 

With happy memorial moan + 

Sweet ghosts in a loving band + 

Roam through the houses that stand⁠— + 

For the builders are not gone. + 

For Where Your Treasure Is, There Will Your Heart Be Also + 

The miser lay on his lonely bed; + 

Life’s candle was burning dim. + 

His heart in an iron chest was hid + 

Under heaps of gold and an iron lid; + 

And whether it were alive or dead + 

It never troubled him. + 

Slowly out of his body he crept. + 

He said, “I am just the same! + 

Only I want my heart in my breast; + 

I will go and fetch it out of my chest!” + 

Through the dark a darker shadow he leapt, + 

Saying “Hell is a fabled flame!” + 

He opened the lid. Oh, Hell’s own night! + 

His ghost-eyes saw no gold!⁠— + 

Empty and swept! Not a gleam was there! + 

In goes his hand, but the chest is bare! + 

Ghost-fingers, aha! have only might + 

To close, not to clasp and hold! + 

But his heart he saw, and he made a clutch + 

At the fungous puff-ball of sin: + 

Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, + 

He grasped a handful of rotten dust, + 

And shrieked, as ghosts may, at the crumbling touch, + 

But hid it his breast within. + 

And some there are who see him sit + 

Under the church, apart, + 

Counting out coins and coins of gold + 

Heap by heap on the dank death-mould: + 

Alas poor ghost and his sore lack of wit⁠— + 

They breed in the dust of his heart! + 

Another miser has now his chest, + 

And it hoards wealth more and more; + 

Like ferrets his hands go in and out, + 

Burrowing, tossing the gold about⁠— + 

Nor heed the heart that, gone from his breast, + 

Is the cold heap’s bloodless core. + 

Now wherein differ old ghosts that sit + 

Counting ghost-coins all day + 

From the man who clings with spirit prone + 

To whatever can never be his own? + 

Who will leave the world with not one whit + 

But a heart all eaten away? + 

The Asthmatic Man to the Satan That Binds Him + 

Satan, avaunt! + 

Nay, take thine hour, + 

Thou canst not daunt, + 

Thou hast no power; + 

Be welcome to thy nest, + 

Though it be in my breast. + 

Burrow amain; + 

Dig like a mole; + 

Fill every vein + 

With half-burnt coal; + 

Puff the keen dust about, + 

And all to choke me out. + 

Fill music’s ways + 

With creaking cries, + 

That no loud praise + 

May climb the skies; + 

And on my labouring chest + 

Lay mountains of unrest. + 

My slumber steep + 

In dreams of haste, + 

That only sleep, + 

No rest, I taste⁠— + 

With stiflings, rimes of rote, + 

And fingers on my throat. + 

Satan, thy might + 

I do defy; + 

Live core of night + 

I patient lie: + 

A wind comes up the gray + 

Will blow thee clean away. + 

Christ’s angel, Death, + 

All radiant white, + 

With one cold breath + 

Will scare thee quite, + 

And give my lungs an air + 

As fresh as answered prayer. + 

So, Satan, do + 

Thy worst with me + 

Until the True + 

Shall set me free, + 

And end what he began, + 

By making me a man. + 

Song-Sermon + 

Lord, What Is Man + 

Lord, what is man + 

That thou art mindful of him! + 

Though in creation’s van, + 

Lord, what is man! + 

He wills less than he can, + 

Lets his ideal scoff him! + 

Lord, what is man + 

That thou art mindful of him! + 

Shadows + 

All things are shadows of thee, Lord; + 

The sun himself is but thy shade; + 

My spirit is the shadow of thy word, + 

A thing that thou hast said. + 

Diamonds are shadows of the sun, + 

They gleam as after him they hark: + 

My soul some arrows of thy light hath won. + 

And feebly fights the dark! + 

All knowledges are broken shades, + 

In gulfs of dark a scattered horde: + 

Together rush the parted glory-grades⁠— + 

Then, lo, thy garment, Lord! + 

My soul, the shadow, still is light + 

Because the shadow falls from thee; + 

I turn, dull candle, to the centre bright, + 

And home flit shadowy. + 

Shine, Lord; shine me thy shadow still; + 

The brighter I, the more thy shade! + 

My motion be thy lovely moveless will! + 

My darkness, light delayed! + 

A Winter Prayer + 

Come through the gloom of clouded skies, + 

The slow dim rain and fog athwart; + 

Through east winds keen with wrong and lies + 

Come and lift up my hopeless heart. + 

Come through the sickness and the pain, + 

The sore unrest that tosses still; + 

Through aching dark that hides the gain + 

Come and arouse my fainting will. + 

Come through the prate of foolish words, + 

The science with no God behind; + 

Through all the pangs of untuned chords + 

Speak wisdom to my shaken mind. + 

Through all the fears that spirits bow + 

Of what hath been, or may befall, + 

Come down and talk with me, for thou + 

Canst tell me all about them all. + 

Hear, hear my sad lone heart entreat, + 

Heart of all joy, below, above! + 

Come near and let me kiss thy feet, + 

And name the names of those I love! + 

Song of a Poor Pilgrim + 

Roses all the rosy way! + 

Roses to the rosier west + 

Where the roses of the day + 

Cling to night’s unrosy breast! + 

Thou who mak’st the roses, why + 

Give to every leaf a thorn? + 

On thy rosy highway I + 

Still am by thy roses torn! + 

Pardon! I will not mistake + 

These good thorns that make me fret! + 

Goads to urge me, stings to wake, + 

For my freedom they are set. + 

Yea, on one steep mountain-side, + 

Climbing to a fancied fold, + 

Roses grasped had let me slide + 

But the thorns did keep their hold. + 

Out of darkness light is born, + 

Out of weakness make me strong: + 

One glad day will every thorn + 

Break into a rose of song. + 

Though like sparrow sit thy bird + 

Lonely on the house-top dark, + 

By the rosy dawning stirred + 

Up will soar thy praising lark; + 

Roses, roses all his song! + 

Roses in a gorgeous feast! + 

Roses in a royal throng, + 

Surging, rosing from the east! + 

An Evening Prayer + 

I am a bubble + 

Upon thy ever-moving, resting sea: + 

Oh, rest me now from tossing, trespass, trouble! + 

Take me down into thee. + 

Give me thy peace. + 

My heart is aching with unquietness: + 

Oh, make its inharmonious beating cease! + 

Thy hand upon it press. + 

My Night! my Day! + 

Swift night and day betwixt, my world doth reel: + 

Potter, take not thy hand from off the clay + 

That whirls upon thy wheel. + 

O Heart, I cry + 

For love and life, pardon and hope and strength! + 

O Father, I am thine; I shall not die, + 

But I shall sleep at length! + 

Song-Sermon + 

Mercy to Thee, O Lord, Belongs + 

Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs, + 

For as his work thou giv’st the man. + 

From us, not thee, come all our wrongs; + 

Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs: + 

With small-cord whips and scorpion thongs + 

Thou lay’st on every ill thy ban. + 

Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs, + 

For as his work thou giv’st the man. + 

A Dream-Song + 

The stars are spinning their threads, + 

And the clouds are the dust that flies, + 

And the suns are weaving them up + 

For the day when the sleepers arise. + 

The ocean in music rolls, + 

The gems are turning to eyes, + 

And the trees are gathering souls + 

For the day when the sleepers arise. + 

The weepers are learning to smile, + 

And laughter to glean the sighs, + 

And hearts to bury their care and guile + 

For the day when the sleepers arise. + 

Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy-red, + 

The larks and the glimmers and flows! + 

The lilies and sparrows and daily bread, + 

And the something that nobody knows! + 

Christmas, 1880 + 

Great-hearted child, thy very being The Son, + 

Who know’st the hearts of all us prodigals;⁠— + 

For who is prodigal but he who has gone + 

Far from the true to heart it with the false?⁠— + 

Who, who but thou, that, from the animals’, + 

Know’st all the hearts, up to the Father’s own, + 

Can tell what it would be to be alone! + 

Alone! No father!⁠—At the very thought + 

Thou, the eternal light, wast once aghast; + 

A death in death for thee it almost wrought! + 

But thou didst haste, about to breathe thy last, + 

And call’dst out “Father” ere thy spirit passed, + 

Exhausted in fulfilling not any vow, + 

But doing his will who greater is than thou. + 

That we might know him, thou didst come and live; + 

That we might find him, thou didst come and die; + 

The son-heart, brother, thy son-being give⁠— + 

We too would love the father perfectly, + 

And to his bosom go back with the cry, + 

Father, into thy hands I give the heart + 

Which left thee but to learn how good thou art! + 

There are but two in all the universe⁠— + 

The father and his children⁠—not a third; + 

Nor, all the weary time, fell any curse! + 

Not once dropped from its nest an unfledged bird + 

But thou wast with it! Never sorrow stirred + 

But a love-pull it was upon the chain + 

That draws the children to the father again! + 

O Jesus Christ, babe, man, eternal son, + 

Take pity! we are poor where thou art rich: + 

Our hearts are small; and yet there is not one + 

In all thy father’s noisy nursery which, + 

Merry, or mourning in its narrow niche, + 

Needs not thy father’s heart, this very now, + 

With all his being’s being, even as thou! + 

Rondel + 

I Do Not Know Thy Final Will + 

I do not know thy final will, + 

It is too good for me to know: + 

Thou willest that I mercy show, + 

That I take heed and do no ill, + 

That I the needy warm and fill, + 

Nor stones at any sinner throw; + 

But I know not thy final will⁠— + 

It is too good for me to know. + 

I know thy love unspeakable⁠— + 

For love’s sake able to send woe! + 

To find thine own thou lost didst go, + 

And wouldst for men thy blood yet spill!⁠— + 

How should I know thy final will, + 

Godwise too good for me to know! + 

The Sparrow + 

O Lord, I cannot but believe + 

The birds do sing thy praises then, when they sing to one another, + 

And they are lying seed-sown land when the winter makes them grieve, + 

Their little bosoms breeding songs for the summer to unsmother! + 

If thou hadst finished me, O Lord, + 

Nor left out of me part of that great gift that goes to singing, + 

I sure had known the meaning high of the songster’s praising word, + 

Had known upon what thoughts of thee his pearly talk he was stringing! + 

I should have read the wisdom hid + 

In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush’s bosom solemn: + 

I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did + 

To make the lark-soprano mount like to a geyser-column! + 

I think I almost understand + 

Thy owl, his muffled swiftness, moon-round eyes, and intoned hooting; + 

I think I could take up the part of a night-owl in the land, + 

With yellow moon and starry things day-dreamers all confuting. + 

But ’mong thy creatures that do sing + 

Perhaps of all I likest am to the housetop-haunting sparrow, + 

That flies brief, sudden flights upon a dumpy, fluttering wing, + 

And chirps thy praises from a throat that’s very short and narrow. + 

But if thy sparrow praise thee well + 

By singing well thy song, nor letting noisy traffic quell it, + 

It may be that, in some remote and leafy heavenly dell, + 

He may with a trumpet-throat awake, and a trumpet-song to swell it! + 

December 23, 1879 + 

A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere; + 

They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the + 

air; + 

But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining + 

windows fair, + 

And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care. + 

Cannot I break some little nut and get at the poetry in it? + 

Cannot I break the shining egg of some all but hatched heavenly linnet? + 

Cannot I find some beauty-worm, and its moony cocoon-silk spin it? + 

Cannot I find my all but lost day in the rich content of a minute? + 

I will sit me down, all aching and tired, in the midst of this + 

never-unclosing + 

Of door or window that makes it look as if truth herself were dozing; + 

I will sit me down and make me a tent, call it poetizing or prosing, + 

Of what may be lying within my reach, things at my poor disposing! + 

Now what is nearest?⁠—My conscious self. Here I sit quiet and say: + 

“Lo, I myself am already a house of poetry solemn and gay! + 

But, alas, the windows are shut, all shut: ’tis a cold and foggy day, + 

And I have not now the light to see what is in me the same alway!” + 

Nay, rather I’ll say: “I am a nut in the hard and frozen ground; + 

Above is the damp and frozen air, the cold blue sky all round; + 

And the power of a leafy and branchy tree is in me crushed and bound + 

Till the summer come and set it free from the grave-clothes + 

in which it is wound!” + 

But I bethink me of something better!⁠—something better, yea best! + 

“I am lying a voiceless, featherless thing in God’s own perfect nest; + 

And the voice and the song are growing within me, slowly lifting my + 

breast; + 

And his wide night-wings are closed about me, for his sun is down in the + 

west!” + 

Doors and windows, tents and grave-clothes, winters and eggs and seeds, + 

Ye shall all be opened and broken and torn; ye are but to serve my needs! + 

On the will of the Father all lovely things are strung like a string of + 

beads + 

For his heart to give the obedient child that the will of the father + 

heeds. + 

Song-Prayer + 

After King David + 

I shall be satisfied + 

With the seeing of thy face. + 

When I awake, wide-eyed, + 

I shall be satisfied + 

With what this life did hide, + 

The one supernal grace! + 

I shall be satisfied + 

With the seeing of thy face. + 

December 27, 1879 + 

Every time would have its song + 

If the heart were right, + 

Seeing Love all tender-strong + 

Fills the day and night. + 

Weary drop the hands of Prayer + 

Calling out for peace; + 

Love always and everywhere + 

Sings and does not cease. + 

Fear, the caitiff, through the night + 

Silent peers about; + 

Love comes singing with a light + 

And doth cast him out. + 

Hate and Guile and Wrath and Doubt + 

Never try to sing; + 

If they did, oh, what a rout + 

Anguished ears would sting! + 

Pride indeed will sometimes aim + 

At the finer speech, + 

But the best that he can frame + 

Is a peacock-screech. + 

Greed will also sometimes try: + 

Happiness he hunts! + 

But his dwelling is a sty, + 

And his tones are grunts. + 

Faith will sometimes raise a song + 

Soaring up to heaven, + 

Then she will be silent long, + 

And will weep at even. + 

Hope has many a gladsome note + 

Now and then to pipe; + 

But, alas, he has the throat + 

Of a bird unripe. + 

Often Joy a stave will start + 

Which the welkin rends, + 

But it always breaks athwart, + 

And untimely ends. + 

Grief, who still for death doth long, + 

Always self-abhorred, + 

Has but one low, troubled song, + 

“I am sorry, Lord.” + 

But Love singeth in the vault. + 

Singeth on the stair; + 

Even for Sorrow will not halt, + 

Singeth everywhere. + 

For the great Love everywhere + 

Over all doth glow; + 

Draws his birds up trough the air, + 

Tends his birds below. + 

And with songs ascending sheer + 

Love-born Love replies, + 

Singing “Father” in his ear + 

Where she bleeding lies. + 

Therefore, if my heart were right + 

I should sing out clear, + 

Sing aloud both day and night + 

Every month in the year! + 

Sunday, December 28, 1879 + 

A dim, vague shrinking haunts my soul, + 

My spirit bodeth ill⁠— + 

As some far-off restraining bank + 

Had burst, and waters, many a rank, + 

Were marching on my hill; + 

As if I had no fire within + 

For thoughts to sit about; + 

As if I had no flax to spin, + 

No lamp to lure the good things in + 

And keep the bad things out. + 

The wind, south-west, raves in the pines + 

That guard my cottage round; + 

The sea-waves fall in stormy lines + 

Below the sandy cliffs and chines, + 

And swell the roaring sound. + 

The misty air, the bellowing wind + 

Not often trouble me; + 

The storm that’s outside of the mind + 

Doth oftener wake my heart to find + 

More peace and liberty. + 

Why is not such my fate to-night? + 

Chance is not lord of things! + 

Man were indeed a hapless wight + 

Things, thoughts occurring as they might⁠— + 

Chaotic wallowings! + 

The man of moods might merely say + 

As by the fire he sat, + 

“I am low spirited to-day; + 

I must do something, work or play, + 

Lest care should kill the cat!” + 

Not such my saw: I was not meant + 

To be the sport of things! + 

The mood has meaning and intent, + 

And my dull heart is humbly bent + 

To have the truth it brings. + 

This sense of needed shelter round, + 

This frequent mental start + 

Show what a poor life mine were found, + 

To what a dead self I were bound, + 

How feeble were my heart, + 

If I who think did stand alone + 

Centre to what I thought, + 

A brain within a box of bone, + 

A king on a deserted throne, + 

A something that was nought! + 

A being without power to be, + 

Or any power to cease; + 

Whom objects but compelled to see, + 

Whose trouble was a windblown sea, + 

A windless sea his peace! + 

This very sadness makes me think + 

How readily I might + 

Be driven to reason’s farthest brink, + 

Then over it, and sudden sink + 

In ghastly waves of night. + 

It makes me know when I am glad + 

’Tis thy strength makes me strong; + 

But for thy bliss I should be sad, + 

But for thy reason should be mad, + 

But for thy right be wrong. + 

Around me spreads no empty waste, + 

No lordless host of things; + 

My restlessness but seeks thy rest; + 

My little good doth seek thy best, + 

My needs thy ministerings. + 

’Tis this, this only makes me safe⁠— + 

I am, immediate, + 

Of one that lives; I am no waif + 

That haggard waters toss and chafe, + 

But of a royal fate, + 

The born-child of a Power that lives + 

Because it will and can, + 

A Love whose slightest motion gives, + 

A Freedom that forever strives + 

To liberate his Man. + 

I live not on the circling air, + 

Live not by daily food; + 

I live not even by thinkings fair, + 

I hold my very being there + 

Where God is pondering good. + 

Because God lives I live; because + 

He thinks, I also think; + 

I am dependent on no laws + 

But on himself, and without pause; + 

Between us hangs no link. + 

The man that lives he knows not how + 

May well fear any mouse! + 

I should be trembling this same now + 

If I did think, my Father, thou + 

Wast nowhere in the house! + 

O Father, lift me on thine arm, + 

And hold me close to thee; + 

Lift me into thy breathing warm, + 

Then cast me, and I fear no harm, + 

Into creation’s sea! + 

Song-Sermon + 

In His Arms Thy Silly Lamb + 

In his arms thy silly lamb, + 

Lo, he gathers to his breast! + 

See, thou sadly bleating dam, + 

See him lift thy silly lamb! + 

Hear it cry, “How blest I am! + 

Here is love, and love is rest!” + 

In his arms thy silly lamb + 

See him gather to his breast! + 

The Donkey in the Cart to the Horse in the Carriage + 

I say! hey! cousin there! I mustn’t call you brother! + 

Yet you have a tail behind, and I have another! + 

You pull, and I pull, though we don’t pull together: + 

You have less hardship, and I have more weather! + 

Your legs are long, mine are short; I am lean, you are fatter; + 

Your step is bold and free, mine goes pitter-patter; + 

Your head is in the air, and mine hangs down like lead⁠— + 

But then my two great ears are so heavy on my head! + 

You need not whisk your stump, nor turn away your nose; + 

Poor donkeys ain’t so stupid as rich horses may suppose! + 

I could feed in any manger just as well as you, + 

Though I don’t despise a thistle⁠—with sauce of dust and dew! + 

T’other day a bishop’s cob stopped before me in a lane, + 

With a tail as broad as oil-cake, and a close-clipped hoggy mane; + 

I stood sideways to the hedge, but he did not want to pass, + 

And he was so full of corn he didn’t care about the grass. + 

Quoth the cob, “You are a donkey of a most peculiar breed! + 

You’ve just eaten up a thistle that was going fast to seed! + 

If you had but let it be, you might have raised a crop! + 

To many a coming dinner you have put a sad stop!” + 

I told him I was hungry, and to leave one of ten + 

Would have spoiled my best dinner, the one I wanted then. + 

Said the cob, “I ought to know the truth about dinners, + 

I don’t eat on roadsides like poor tramping sinners!” + 

“Why don’t you take it easy? You are working much too hard! + 

In the shafts you’ll die one day, if you’re not upon your guard! + 

Have pity on your friends: work seems to you delectable, + 

But believe me such a cart⁠—excuse me⁠—’s not respectable!” + 

I told him I must trot in the shafts where I was put, + 

Nor look round at the cart, but set foremost my best foot; + 

It was rather rickety, and the axle wanted oil, + 

But I always slept at night with the deep sleep of toil! + 

“All very fine,” he said, “to wag your ears and parley, + 

And pretend you quite despise my bellyfuls of barley! + 

But with blows and with starving, and with labour over-hard, + 

By spurs! a week will see you in the knacker’s yard.” + 

I thanked him for his counsel, and said I thought I’d take it, really, + 

If he’d spare me half a feed out of four feeds daily. + 

He tossed his head at that: “Now don’t be cheeky!” said he; + 

“When I find I’m getting fat, I’ll think of you: keep steady.” + 

“Good-bye!” I said⁠—and say, for you are such another! + 

Why, now I look at you, I see you are his brother! + 

Yes, thank you for your kick: ’twas all that you could spare, + 

For, sure, they clip and singe you very, very bare! + 

My cart it is upsets you! but in that cart behind + 

There’s no dirt or rubbish, no bags of gold or wind! + 

There’s potatoes there, and wine, and corn, and mustard-seed, + 

And a good can of milk, and some honey too, indeed! + 

Few blows I get, some hay, and of water many a draught: + 

I tell you he’s no coster that sits upon my shaft! + 

And for the knacker’s yard⁠—that’s not my destined bed: + 

No donkey ever yet saw himself there lying dead. + 

Room to Roam + 

Strait is the path? He means we must not roam? + 

Yes; but the strait path leads into a boundless home. + 

Cottage Songs + 

I + 

By the Cradle + 

Close her eyes: she must not peep! + 

Let her little puds go slack; + 

Slide away far into sleep: + 

Sis will watch till she comes back! + 

Mother’s knitting at the door, + 

Waiting till the kettle sings; + 

When the kettle’s song is o’er + 

She will set the bright tea-things. + 

Father’s busy making hay + 

In the meadow by the brook, + 

Not so very far away⁠— + 

Close its peeps, it needn’t look! + 

God is round us everywhere⁠— + 

Sees the scythe glitter and rip; + 

Watches baby gone somewhere; + 

Sees how mother’s fingers skip! + 

Sleep, dear baby; sleep outright: + 

Mother’s sitting just behind: + 

Father’s only out of sight; + 

God is round us like the wind. + 

II + 

Sweeping the Floor + 

Sweep and sweep and sweep the floor, + 

Sweep the dust, pick up the pin; + 

Make it clean from fire to door, + 

Clean for father to come in! + 

Mother said that God goes sweeping, + 

Looking, sweeping with a broom, + 

All the time that we are sleeping, + 

For a shilling in the room: + 

Did he drop it out of glory, + 

Walking far above the birds? + 

Or did parson make the story + 

For the thinking afterwards? + 

If I were the swept-for shilling + 

I would hearken through the gloom; + 

Roll out fast, and fall down willing + 

Right before the sweeping broom! + 

III + 

Washing the Clothes + 

This is the way we wash the clo’es + 

Free from dirt and smoke and clay! + 

Through and through the water flows, + 

Carries Ugly right away! + 

This is the way we bleach the clo’es: + 

Lay them out upon the green; + 

Through and through the sunshine goes, + 

Makes them white as well as clean! + 

This is the way we dry the clo’es: + 

Hang them on the bushes about; + 

Through and through the soft wind blows, + 

Draws and drives the wetness out! + 

Water, sun, and windy air + 

Make the clothes clean, white, and sweet + 

Lay them now in lavender + 

For the Sunday, folded neat! + 

IV + 

Drawing Water + 

Dark, as if it would not tell, + 

Lies the water, still and cool: + 

Dip the bucket in the well, + 

Lift it from the precious pool! + 

Up it comes all brown and dim, + 

Telling of the twilight sweet: + 

As it rises to the brim + 

See the sun and water meet! + 

See the friends each other hail! + 

“Here you are!” cries Master Sun; + 

Mistress Water from the pail + 

Flashes back, alive with fun! + 

Have you not a tale to tell, + 

Water, as I take you home? + 

Tell me of the hidden well + 

Whence you, first of all, did come. + 

Of it you have kept some flavour + 

Through long paths of darkling strife: + 

Water all has still a savour + 

Of the primal well of life! + 

Could you show the lovely way + 

Back and up through sea and sky + 

To that well? Oh, happy day, + 

I would drink, and never die! + 

Jesus sits there on its brink + 

All the world’s great thirst to slake, + 

Offering every one to drink + 

Who will only come and take! + 

Lord of wells and waters all, + 

Lord of rains and dewy beads, + 

Unto thee my thirst doth call + 

For the thing thou know’st it needs! + 

Come home, water sweet and cool, + 

Gift of God thou always art! + 

Spring up, Well more beautiful, + 

Rise in mine straight from his heart. + 

V + 

Cleaning the Windows + 

Wash the window; rub it dry; + 

Make the ray-door clean and bright: + 

He who lords it in the sky + 

Loves on cottage floors to light! + 

Looking over sea and beck, + 

Mountain-forest, orchard-bloom, + 

He can spy the smallest speck + 

Anywhere about the room! + 

See how bright his torch is blazing + 

In the heart of mother’s store! + 

Strange! I never saw him gazing + 

So into that press before! + 

Ah, I see!⁠—the wooden pane + 

In the window, dull and dead, + 

Father called its loss a gain, + 

And a glass one put instead! + 

What a difference it makes! + 

How it melts the filmy gloom! + 

What a little more it takes + 

Much to brighten up a room! + 

There I spy a dusty streak! + 

There a corner not quite clean! + 

There a cobweb! There the sneak + 

Of a spider, watching keen! + 

Lord of suns, and eyes that see, + 

Shine into me, see and show; + 

Leave no darksome spot in me + 

Where thou dost not shining go. + 

Fill my spirit full of eyes, + 

Doors of light in every part; + 

Open windows to the skies + 

That no moth corrupt my heart. + 

The Wind and the Moon + 

Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out! + 

You stare + 

In the air + 

As if crying “Beware,” + 

Always looking what I am about: + 

I hate to be watched; I will blow you out!” + 

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon. + 

So, deep + 

On a heap + 

Of clouds, to sleep + 

Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon, + 

Muttering low, “I’ve done for that Moon!” + 

He turned in his bed: she was there again! + 

On high + 

In the sky + 

With her one ghost-eye + 

The Moon shone white and alive and plain: + 

Said the Wind, “I will blow you out again!” + 

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew slim. + 

“With my sledge + 

And my wedge + 

I have knocked off her edge! + 

I will blow,” said the Wind, “right fierce and grim, + 

And the creature will soon be slimmer than slim!” + 

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread. + 

“One puff + 

More’s enough + 

To blow her to snuff! + 

One good puff more where the last was bred, + 

And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go that thread!” + 

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone. + 

In the air + 

Nowhere + 

Was a moonbeam bare; + 

Larger and nearer the shy stars shone: + 

Sure and certain the Moon was gone! + 

The Wind he took to his revels once more; + 

On down + 

And in town, + 

A merry-mad clown, + 

He leaped and holloed with whistle and roar⁠— + 

When there was that glimmering thread once more! + 

He flew in a rage⁠—he danced and blew; + 

But in vain + 

Was the pain + 

Of his bursting brain, + 

For still the Moon-scrap the broader grew + 

The more that he swelled his big cheeks and blew. + 

Slowly she grew⁠—till she filled the night, + 

And shone + 

On her throne + 

In the sky alone + 

A matchless, wonderful, silvery light, + 

Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night. + 

Said the Wind, “What a marvel of power am I! + 

With my breath, + 

In good faith, + 

I blew her to death!⁠— + 

First blew her away right out of the sky, + 

Then blew her in: what a strength am I!” + 

But the Moon she knew nought of the silly affair; + 

For, high + 

In the sky + 

With her one white eye, + 

Motionless miles above the air, + 

She never had heard the great Wind blare. + 

The Foolish Harebell + 

A harebell hung her wilful head: + 

“I am tired, so tired! I wish I was dead.” + 

She hung her head in the mossy dell: + 

“If all were over, then all were well!” + 

The Wind he heard, and was pitiful, + 

And waved her about to make her cool. + 

“Wind, you are rough!” said the dainty Bell; + 

“Leave me alone⁠—I am not well.” + 

The Wind, at the word of the drooping dame, + 

Sighed to himself and ceased in shame. + 

“I am hot, so hot!” she moaned and said; + 

“I am withering up; I wish I was dead!” + 

Then the Sun he pitied her woeful case, + 

And drew a thick veil over his face. + 

“Cloud go away, and don’t be rude,” + 

She said; “I do not see why you should!” + 

The Cloud withdrew. Then the Harebell cried, + 

“I am faint, so faint!⁠—and no water beside!” + 

The Dew came down its millionfold path: + 

She murmured, “I did not want a bath!” + 

The Dew went up; the Wind softly crept; + 

The Night came down, and the Harebell slept. + 

A boy ran past in the morning gray, + 

Plucked the Harebell, and threw her away. + 

The Harebell shivered, and sighed, “Oh! oh! + 

I am faint indeed! Come, dear Wind, blow.” + 

The Wind blew gently, and did not speak. + 

She thanked him kindly, but grew more weak. + 

“Sun, dear Sun, I am cold!” she said. + 

He shone; but lower she drooped her head. + 

“O Rain, I am withering! all the blue + 

Is fading out of me!⁠—come, please do!” + 

The Rain came down as fast as he could, + 

But for all his good will he could do her no good. + 

She shuddered and shrivelled, and moaning said, + 

“Thank you all kindly!” and then she was dead. + 

Let us hope, let us hope when she comes next year + 

She’ll be simple and sweet! But I fear, I fear! + 

Song + 

I Was Very Cold + 

I was very cold + 

In the summer weather; + 

The sun shone all his gold, + 

But I was very cold⁠— + 

Alas, we were grown old, + 

Love and I together! + 

Oh, but I was cold + 

In the summer weather! + 

Sudden I grew warmer + 

Though the brooks were frozen: + 

“Truly, scorn did harm her!” + 

I said, and I grew warmer; + 

“Better men the charmer + 

Knows at least a dozen!” + 

I said, and I grew warmer + 

Though the brooks were frozen. + 

Spring sits on her nest, + 

Daisies and white clover; + 

And my heart at rest + 

Lies in the spring’s young nest: + 

My love she loves me best, + 

And the frost is over! + 

Spring sits on her nest, + 

Daisies and white clover! + 

An Improvisation + 

The stars cleave the sky. + 

Yet for us they rest, + 

And their race-course high + 

Is a shining nest! + 

The hours hurry on. + 

But where is thy flight, + 

Soft pavilion + 

Of motionless night? + 

Earth gives up her trees + 

To the holy air; + 

They live in the breeze; + 

They are saints at prayer! + 

Summer night, come from God, + 

On your beauty, I see, + 

A still wave has flowed + 

Of eternity! + 

Equity + 

No bird can sing in tune but that the Lord + 

Sits throned in equity above the heaven, + 

And holds the righteous balance always even; + 

No heart can true response to love afford + 

Wherein from one to eight not every chord + 

Is yet attuned by the spirits seven: + 

For tuneful no bird sings but that the Lord + 

Is throned in equity above high heaven. + 

Oh heart, by wrong unfilial scathed and scored, + 

And from thy humble throne with mazedness driven, + 

Take courage: when thy wrongs thou hast forgiven, + 

Thy rights in love thy God will see restored: + 

No bird could sing in tune but that the Lord + 

Sits throned in equity above the heaven. + 

The Consoler + 

On an Engraving of Scheffer’s Christus Consolator + 

What human form is this? what form divine? + 

And who are these that gaze upon his face + 

Mild, beautiful, and full of heavenly grace, + 

With whose reflected light the gazers shine? + 

Saviour, who does not know it to be thine? + 

Who does not long to fill a gazer’s place? + 

And yet there is no time, there is no space + 

To keep away thy servants from thy shrine! + 

Here if we kneel, and watch with faithful eyes, + 

Thou art not too far for faithful eyes to see, + 

Thou art not too far to turn and look on me, + 

To speak to me, and to receive my sighs. + 

Therefore for ever I forget the skies, + 

And find an everlasting Sun in thee. + 

Oh let us never leave that happy throng! + 

From that low attitude of love not cease! + 

In all the world there is no other peace, + 

In all the world no other shield from wrong. + 

But chiefly, Saviour, for thy feet we long⁠— + 

For no vain quiet, for no pride’s increase⁠— + 

But that, being weak, and Thou divinely strong, + 

Us from our hateful selves thou mayst release. + 

We wander from thy fold’s free holy air, + 

Forget thy looks, and take our fill of sin! + 

But if thou keep us evermore within, + 

We never surely can forget thee there⁠— + 

Breathing thy breath, thy white robe given to wear, + 

And loving thee for all thou diedst to win! + 

To speak of him in language of our own, + 

Is not for us too daringly to try; + 

But, Saviour, we can read thy history + 

Upon the faces round thy humble throne; + 

And as the flower among the grass makes known + 

What summer suns have warmed it from the sky, + 

As every human smile and human sigh + 

Is witness that we do not live alone, + 

So in that company⁠—in those sweet tears, + 

The first-born of a rugged melted heart, + 

In those gaunt chains for ever torn apart, + 

And in the words that weeping mother hears, + 

We read the story of two thousand years, + 

And know thee somewhat, Saviour, as thou art. + 

To ⸻ + 

I cannot write old verses here, + 

Dead things a thousand years away, + 

When all the life of the young year + 

Is in the summer day. + 

The roses make the world so sweet, + 

The bees, the birds have such a tune, + 

There’s such a light and such a heat + 

And such a joy this June, + 

One must expand one’s heart with praise, + 

And make the memory secure + 

Of sunshine and the woodland days + 

And summer twilights pure. + 

Oh listen rather! Nature’s song + 

Comes from the waters, beating tides, + 

Green-margined rivers, and the throng + 

Of streams on mountain-sides. + 

So fair those water-spirits are, + 

Such happy strength their music fills, + 

Our joy shall be to wander far + 

And find them on the hills. + 

To a Sister + 

A fresh young voice that sings to me + 

So often many a simple thing, + 

Should surely not unanswered be + 

By all that I can sing. + 

Dear voice, be happy every way + 

A thousand changing tones among, + 

From little child’s unfinished lay + 

To angel’s perfect song. + 

In dewy woods⁠—fair, soft, and green + 

Like morning woods are childhood’s bower⁠— + 

Be like the voice of brook unseen + 

Among the stones and flowers; + 

A joyful voice though born so low, + 

And making all its neighbours glad; + 

Sweet, hidden, constant in its flow + 

Even when the winds are sad. + 

So, strengthen in a peaceful home, + 

And daily deeper meanings bear; + 

And when life’s wildernesses come + 

Be brave and faithful there. + 

Try all the glorious magic range, + 

Worship, forgive, console, rejoice, + 

Until the last and sweetest change⁠— + 

So live and grow, dear voice. + 

Contrition + 

Out of the gulf into the glory, + 

Father, my soul cries out to be lifted. + 

Dark is the woof of my dismal story, + 

Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!⁠— + 

Out of the gulf into the glory, + 

Lift me, and save my story. + 

I have done many things merely shameful; + 

I am a man ashamed, my father! + 

My life is ashamed and broken and blameful⁠— + 

The broken and blameful, oh, cleanse and gather! + 

Heartily shame me, Lord, of the shameful! + 

To my judge I flee with my blameful. + 

Saviour, at peace in thy perfect purity, + 

Think what it is, not to be pure! + 

Strong in thy love’s essential security, + 

Think upon those who are never secure. + 

Full fill my soul with the light of thy purity: + 

Fold me in love’s security. + 

O Father, O Brother, my heart is sore aching! + 

Help it to ache as much as is needful; + 

Is it you cleansing me, mending, remaking, + 

Dear potter-hands, so tender and heedful? + 

Sick of my past, of my own self aching⁠— + 

Hurt on, dear hands, with your making. + 

Proud of the form thou hadst given thy vessel, + 

Proud of myself, I forgot my donor; + 

Down in the dust I began to nestle, + 

Poured thee no wine, and drank deep of dishonour! + 

Lord, thou hast broken, thou mendest thy vessel! + 

In the dust of thy glory I nestle. + 

The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs + 

Come + 

Home. + 