All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Oh, deem not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep;
The Power who pities man, has shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.

The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.

There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night;
And grief may bide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.

And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier,
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain,
Hope that a brighter, happier sphere
Will give him to thy arms again.

Nor let the good man's trust depart,
Though life its common gifts deny,
Though with a pierced and broken heart,
And spurned of men, he goes to die.

For God h...

For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
    Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
Be a dark, cool water calling - calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
    When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness,
A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
    In the dark of the end.

Missis Moriarty called last week, and says she to me, says she:
"Sure the heart of me's broken entirely now -    it's the fortunate woman you are;
You've still got your Dinnis to cheer up your home, but me Patsy boy where is he?
Lyin' alone, cold as a stone, kilt in the weariful wahr.
Oh, I'm seein' him now as I looked on him last, wid his hair all curly and bright,
And the wonderful, tenderful heart he had, and his eyes as he wint away,
Shinin' and lookin' down on me from the pride of his proper height:
Sure I'll remember me boy like that if I live to me dyin' day."

And just as she spoke them very same words me Dinnis came in at the door,
Came in from McGonigle's ould shebeen, came in from drinkin' his pay;
And Missis Moriarty looked at him, and she didn't say anny more,
But sh...

I took my heart in my hand
    (O my love, O my love),
I said: Let me fall or stand,
    Let me live or die,
But this once hear me speak -
    (O my love, O my love) -
Yet a woman's words are weak;
    You should speak, not I.

You took my heart in your hand
    With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
    Then set it down,
And said: It is still unripe,
    Better wait awhile;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
    Till the corn grows brown.

As you set it down it broke -
    Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
    At your judgement that I heard:
But I have not often smiled
    Since then, nor questioned since,
Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,
    Nor sung with the singing bird.

I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL

Affection’s charm no longer gilds
The idol of the shrine;
But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
Regret’s ambrosial wine.
Though Friendship’s offering buried lies
’Neath cold Aversion’s snow,
Regard and Faith will ever bloom
Perpetually below.

I see thee whirl in marble halls,
In Pleasure’s giddy train;
Remorse is never on that brow,
Nor Sorrow’s mark of pain.
Deceit has marked thee for her own;
Inconstancy the same;
And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.



II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC

The dews are heavy on my brow;
My breath comes hard and low;
Yet, mother dear, grant one request,
Before your boy must go.
Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,
And ere my sens...

I rose up as my custom is
    On the eve of All-Souls' day,
And left my grave for an hour or so
To call on those I used to know
    Before I passed away.

I visited my former Love
    As she lay by her husband's side;
I asked her if life pleased her, now
She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,
    And crazed with the ills he eyed;

Who used to drag her here and there
    Wherever his fancies led,
And point out pale phantasmal things,
And talk of vain vague purposings
    That she discredited.

She was quite civil, and replied,
    "Old comrade, is that you?
Well, on the whole, I like my life. -
I know I swore I'd be no wife,
    But what was I to do?

"You see, of all men for my sex
    A poet is the worst;
Women ...

"Farewell, Romance!" the Cave-men said;
"With bone well carved He went away,
Flint arms the ignoble arrowhead,
And jasper tips the spear to-day.
Changed are the Gods of Hunt and Dance,
And He with these. Farewell, Romance!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Lake-folk sighed;
"We lift the weight of flatling years;
The caverns of the mountain-side
Hold him who scorns our hutted piers.
Lost hills whereby we dare not dwell,
Guard ye his rest. Romance, farewell!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Soldier spoke;
"By sleight of sword we may not win,
But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke
Of arquebus and culverin.
Honour is lost, and none may tell
Who paid good blows. Romance, farewell!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Traders cried;
"Our keels have lain with every ...

Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere, it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do it is like a confession
Of having little feeling, or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.

Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
And not wind in. And time itself's a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they're old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has...

Roses ruddy and roses white,
What are the joys that my heart discloses?
Sitting alone in the fading light
Memories come to me here tonight
With the wonderful scent of the big red roses.

Memories come as the daylight fades
Down on the hearth where the firelight dozes;
Flicker and flutter the lights and shades,
And I see the face of a queen of maids
Whose memory comes with the scent of roses.

Visions arise of a scent of mirth,
And a ball-room belle who superbly poses,
A queenly woman of queenly worth,
And I am the happiest man on earth
With a single flower from a bunch of roses.

Only her memory lives tonight,
God in his wisdom her young life closes;
Over her grave may the turf be light,
Cover her coffin with roses white
She was a...

Tune - "Roy's Wife."


I.

            Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy?
            Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy?
            Well thou know'st my aching heart -
            And canst thou leave me thus for pity?
    In this thy plighted, fond regard,
        Thus cruelly to part, my Katy?
    Is this thy faithful swain's reward -
        An aching, broken heart, my Katy!

II.

    Farewell! and ne'er such sorrows tear
        That fickle heart of thine, my Katy!
    Thou may'st find those will love thee dear -
        But not a love like mine, my Katy!
            Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy?
            Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy?
            Well thou know'st my aching heart -
            And can...

My spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way.
My emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.

A fathomless and boundless deep,
There we wander, there we weep;
On the hungry craving wind
My spectre follows thee behind.

He scents thy footsteps in the snow,
Wheresoever thou dost go
Through the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?

Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?

Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereaved of their life.
Their marble tombs I built with tears
And with cold and shuddering fears.

Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
...

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
‘The Legend of Good Women,’ long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho’ my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars,
And I heard sounds of ins...

There's a regret
So grinding, so immitigably sad,
Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . .
Do you not know it yet?

For deeds undone
Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due,
Till there seems naught so despicable as you
In all the grin o' the sun.

Like an old shoe
The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
About the beach of Time, till by and by
Death, that derides you too -

Death, as he goes
His ragman's round, espies you, where you stray,
With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way;
And then - and then, who knows

But the kind Grave
Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
In that black bridewell working out his term,
Hanker and grope and crave?

'Poor fool that might -
That might, yet would...

Christ was not sad, i' th' garden, for His own
Passion, but for His sheep's dispersion.

Lay but a finger on
That pallid petal sweet,
It trembles gray and wan
Beneath the passing feet.

But soft! blown rose, we know
A merriment of bloom,
A life of sturdy glow, -
But no such dear perfume.

As some good bard, whose page
Of life with beauty's fraught,
Grays on to ripe old age
Sweet-mellowed through with thought.

So when his hoary head
Is wept into the tomb,
The mind, which is not dead,
Sheds round it rare perfume.

Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.

We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire, receding to hoarse despair.
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.

One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing,
Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him;
One drifts slowly down from a waking dream.
One, foreseeing, lingers forever unmoving . . .
Upward and downward, past him there, we stream.

One has death in his eyes: and wal...

God hath laid his hand on me:
He hath taken all my glee,
And my spirit's emptied cup
Soon must give its life-blood up.

If the sun doth wake and rise,
If it sink in gilded skies,
All alike my heart doth ache,
Comfort it can never take.

From my eyelids there do flow
Tears, and I must weep e'en so
Ever, ever. Lord of Light,
Who can hide him from thy sight!

Though we shun the stormy sea,
Though from war's affray we flee,
Yet misfortune shows her face
Howsoe'er concealed our place.

Mine a life so far from fame
Few there were could know my name;
Evil hap and jealousy
Had no way of harming me.

But the Lord, who doth disdain
Flimsy safeguards raised by man,
Struck a blow more swift and sure
In that I was...