I For long the cruel wish I knew That your free heart should ache for me While mine should bear no ache for you; For, long the cruel wish! I knew How men can

How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds And into the Ram, when weeks

They hail me as one living, But don’t they know That I have died of late years, Untombed although? I am but a shape that stands here, A pulseless mould, A pale past picture,

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!” Then

Had I but lived a hundred years ago I might have gone, as I have gone this year, By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know, And Time have placed his finger on

I I traversed a dominion Whose spokesmen spake out strong Their purpose and opinion Through pulpit, press, and song. I scarce had means to note there A large-eyed few, and dumb, Who thought not

I O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free- The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

I MARKED her ruined hues, Her custom-straitened views, And asked, “Can there indwell My Amabel?” I looked upon her gown, Once rose, now earthen brown; The change was like the knell Of Amabel. Her

Minor Key I Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might That fashioned forth its loveliness Had other aims than my delight. II About my path there flits a Fair, Who

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won. They were the

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, “He was a man

You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, A type of decayed gentility; And by some small signs he well can guess That she comes

Southampton Docks: October 1899 Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cendric with the Saxons entered in, And Henry’s army lept afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands, Vaster battalions press for

Under a daisied bank There stands a rich red ruminating cow, And hard against her flank A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow. The flowery river-ooze Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail;

Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies – A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal

If hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire By bonds of every bond the best, If hours be years. The twain are blest Do eastern stars slope never

I Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. II Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of

By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue Towards her door I went, And sunset on her window-panes Reflected our intent. The creeper on the gable nigh Was fired to more than red And when I came

I I would that folk forgot me quite, Forgot me quite! I would that I could shrink from sight, And no more see the sun. Would it were time to say farewell, To claim

There was a time in former years While my roof-tree was his When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this! I should have murmured anxiously, ‘The prickling rain

I Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god’s spiny hair; The loud south-wester’s swell and yell Smote it at midnight, and it fell. Thus ends the tree Where Some One

I I saw a slowly-stepping train Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar Following in files across a twilit plain A strange and mystic form the foremost bore. II And by contagious

In the vaulted way, where the passage turned To the shadowy corner that none could see, You paused for our parting, – plaintively: Though overnight had come words that burned My fond frail happiness

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as

I When of tender mind and body I was moved by minstrelsy, And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi” Brought a strange delight to me. II In the battle-breathing jingle Of its forward-footing tune

Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on! Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee; Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan To biting blasts that are

I A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter winged, horned, and spined – A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

One without looks in tonight Through the curtain-chink From the sheet of glistening white; One without looks in tonight As we sit and think By the fender-brink. We do not discern those eyes Watching

THERE were two youths of equal age, Wit, station, strength, and parentage; They studied at the self-same schools, And shaped their thoughts by common rules. One pondered on the life of man, His hopes,

CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime, Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen; Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence, Friends interblent us. “Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome

When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away. What would bechance

While the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine – All smalling slowly to the gray sea line – And each significant red smoke-shaft pales, Keen sense

In Memory of one of the Writer’s Family who was a Volunteer during the War With Napoleon In a ferny byway Near the great South-Wessex Highway, A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft; The dew-damps

Since Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were; To hold the flood a local scare; To argue, though the stolid stare, That everything had happened

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity. How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry With the

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild

I I have lived with Shades so long, So long have talked to them, I sped to street and throng, That sometimes they In their dim style Will pause awhile To hear my say;

Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies. Flower-petals flee; But since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me. Birds faint in dread: I

NOT a line of her writing have I, Not a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there; And in vain

Spoken by Miss Ada Rehan at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a Performance on behalf of Lady Jeune’s Holiday Fund for City Children. BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims, Permit

I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, “Would God it came to pass My heart had shrunk as thin!” For then, I, undistrest By hearts grown cold to me,

For A. W. B. SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her side An arch-designer, for she planned to build. He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled In every intervolve of high and wide Well

AS evening shaped I found me on a moor Which sight could scarce sustain: The black lean land, of featureless contour, Was like a tract in pain. “This scene, like my own life,” I

Is it worth while, dear, now, To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed For marriage-rites discussed, decried, delayed So many years? Is it worth while, dear, now, To stir desire for old fond

The sun said, watching my watering-pot “Some morn you’ll pass away; These flowers and plants I parch up hot – Who’ll water them that day? “Those banks and beds whose shape your eye Has

In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and

WHEN you shall see me lined by tool of Time, My lauded beauties carried off from me, My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it – We who believe the evidence? Here and there the watch-towers knell it With a sullen significance, Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry