Exmoor Verses I. Vashti's Song

Over the rim of the Moor,
    And under the starry sky,
Two men came to my door
    And rested them thereby.

Beneath the bough and the star,
    In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar
    And the merry days so young!

Beneath the dawn and the bough
    I heard them arise and go:
And my heart it is aching now
    For the more it will never know.

Why did they two depart
    Before I could understand?
Where lies that land, O my heart?
    --O my heart, where lies that land?

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born on November 21, 1863, and died on May 12, 1944, was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name Q. His legacy includes a vast body of critical and anthological work, most notably 'The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900'. Quiller-Couch was knighted in 1910 and also served as a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. His works have influenced many, including writers like Virginia Woolf.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Measure For Measure.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Lady Jane.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Behold! I Am Not One That Goes To Lectures.'

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Epilogue To A Mother, On Seeing Her Smile Repeated In Her Daughter's Eyes

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

English

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Exmoor Verses III. Dereliction

O'er the tears that we shed, dear
    The bitter vines twist,
And the hawk and the red deer
    They keep where we kiss'd:
All broken lies the shieling
    That sheltered from rain,
With a star to pierce the ceiling,
    And the dawn an empty pane.

Thro' the mist, up the moorway,
    Fade hunters and pack;
From the ridge to thy doorway
    Happy voices float back ...
O, between the threads o' mist, love,
    Reach your hands from the house.
Only mind that we kiss'd, love,
    And forget the broken vows!

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Exmoor Verses II. Saturn

From my farm, from hèr farm
    Furtively we came.
In either home a hearth was warm:
    We nursed a hungrier flame.

Our feet were foul with mire,
    Our faces blind with mist;
But all the night was naked fire
    About us where we kiss'd.

To her farm, to my farm,
    Loathing we returned;
Pale beneath a gallow's arm
    The planet Saturn burned.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

To A Friend Who Sent Me A Box Of Violets

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glyn...

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

The Exile.

Night waneth fast, the morning star
    Saddens with light the glimmering sea,
Whose waves shall soon to realms afar
    Waft me from hope, from love, and thee.
Coldly the beam from yonder sky
    Looks o'er the waves that onward stray;
But colder still the stranger's eye
    To him whose home is far away

Oh, not at hour so chill and bleak,
    Let thoughts of me come o'er thy breast;
But of the lost one think and speak,
    When summer suns sink calm to rest.
So, as I wander, Fancy's dream
    Shall bring me o'er the sunset seas,
Thy look in every melting beam,
    Thy whisper in each dying breeze.

Thomas Moore

Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXIV. - The Italian Itinerant And The Swiss Goatherd. - Part I

I

Now that the farewell tear is dried,
Heaven prosper thee, be hope thy guide
Hope be thy guide, adventurous Boy;
The wages of thy travel, joy!
Whether for London bound, to trill
Thy mountain notes with simple skill;
Or on thy head to poise a show
Of Images in seemly row;
The graceful form of milk-white Steed,
Or Bird that soared with Ganymede;
Or through our hamlets thou wilt bear
The sightless Milton, with his hair
Around his placid temples curled;
And Shakespeare at his side, a freight,
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world!
Hope be thy guide, adventurous Boy;
The wages of thy travel, joy!

II

But thou, perhaps, (alert as free
Though serving sage philosophy)
Wilt ramble over hill ...

William Wordsworth

To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From The South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811

Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
While, day by day, grim neighbour! huge Black Comb
Frowns deepening visibly his native gloom,
Unless, perchance rejecting in despite
What on the Plain 'we' have of warmth and light,
In his own storms he hides himself from sight.
Rough is the time; and thoughts, that would be free
From heaviness, oft fly, dear Friend, to thee;
Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road
Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad;
Where one poor Plane-tree, having as it might
Attained a stature twice a tall man's height,
Hopeless of further growth, and brown and sere
Through half the summer...

William Wordsworth