I'll write, because I'll give
You critics means to live;
For should I not supply
The cause, th' effect would die.

Sleet! and Hail! and Thunder!
And ye Winds that rave,
Till the sands thereunder
Tinge the sullen wave -

Winds, that like a Demon,
Howl with horrid note
Round the toiling Seaman,
In his tossing boat -

From his humble dwelling,
On the shingly shore,
Where the billows swelling,
Keep such hollow roar -

From that weeping Woman,
Seeking with her cries
Succor superhuman
From the frowning skies -

From the Urchin pining
For his Father's knee -
From the lattice shining -
Drive him out to sea!

Let broad leagues dissever
Him from yonder foam -
Oh, God! to think Man ever
Comes too near his Home!

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,

Good-bye, good-bye to Summer!
For Summer's nearly done;
The garden smiling faintly,
Cool breezes in the sun;
Our Thrushes now are silent,
Our Swallows flown away,
But Robin's here, in coat of brown,
With ruddy breast-knot gay.
Robin, Robin Redbreast,
O Robin dear!
Robin singing sweetly
In the falling of the year.

Bright yellow, red, and orange,
The leaves come down in hosts;
The trees are Indian Princes,
But soon they'll turn to Ghosts;
The scanty pears and apples
Hang russet on the bough,
It's Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late,
'Twill soon be Winter now.
Robin, Robin Redbreast,
O Robin dear!
And welaway! my Robin,
For pinching times are near.

The fireside for the Cricket,
The wheatstack for the Mouse,
Wh...

I

    Everybody else, then, going,
And I still left where the fair was? . . .
Much have I seen of neighbour loungers
    Making a lusty showing,
    Each now past all knowing.

II

    There is an air of blankness
In the street and the littered spaces;
Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway
    Wizen themselves to lankness;
    Kennels dribble dankness.

III

    Folk all fade. And whither,
As I wait alone where the fair was?
Into the clammy and numbing night-fog
    Whence they entered hither.
    Soon do I follow thither!

June 2, 1913.

Above the russet clods the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize--
Up from their hurry see the Skylark flies,
And oer her half-formed nest, with happy wings,
Winnows the air till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust spot in the sunny skies,
And drops and drops till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed--not dreaming then
That birds, which flew so high, would drop again
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud
And...

O English mother, in the ruddy glow
Hugging your baby closer when outside
You see the silent, soft, and cruel snow
Falling again, and think what ills betide
Unshelter'd creatures, your sad thoughts may go
Where War and Winter now, two spectre-wolves,
Hunt in the freezing vapour that involves
Those Asian peaks of ice and gulfs below.
Does this young Soldier heed the snow that fills
His mouth and open eyes? or mind, in truth,
To-night, his mother's parting syllables?
Ha! is't a red coat? Merely blood. Keep ruth
For others; this is but an Afghan youth
Shot by the stranger on his native hills.

We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

Welcome, dear Heart, and a most kind good-morrow;
The day is gloomy, but our looks shall shine: -
Flowers I have none to give thee, but I borrow
Their sweetness in a verse to speak for thine.

Here are red roses, gather'd at thy cheeks, -
The white were all too happy to look white:
For love the rose, for faith the lily speaks;
It withers in false hands, but here 'tis bright!

Dost love sweet Hyacinth? Its scented leaf
Curls manifold, - all love's delights blow double:
'Tis said this flow'ret is inscribed with grief, -
But let that hint of a forgotten trouble.

I pluck'd the Primrose at night's dewy noon;
Like Hope, it show'd its blossoms in the night; -
'Twas, like Endymion, watching for the Moon!
And here are Sun-flowers, amorous of light!

A meadow brown; across the yonder edge
A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge
Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,
Till where beyond it staggers up again;
The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line
Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine,
And in their zigzag tottering have reeled
In drunken efforts to enclose the field,
Which carries on its breast, September born,
A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn.
Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon
The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler's son,
A little semi-savage boy of nine.
Now dozing in the warmth of Nature's wine,
His face the sun has tampered with, and wrought,
By heated kisses, mischief, and has brought
Some vagrant freckles, while from here and there
A few wild locks of vagabon...

I

My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!

II

I have but to be by thee, and thy hand
Would never let mine go, thy heart withstand
The beating of my heart to reach its place.
When should I look for thee and feel thee gone?
When cry for the old comfort and find none?
Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face.

III

Oh, I should fade, ’tis willed so! might I save,
Galdly I would, whatever beauty gave
Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too.
It is not to be granted. But the soul
Whence t...

    'Tis Friendship's pledge, my young, fair friend,
        Nor thou the gift refuse,
    Nor with unwilling ear attend
        The moralizing muse.

    Since thou in all thy youth and charms,
        Must bid the world adieu,
    (A world 'gainst peace in constant arms)
        To join the friendly few.

    Since, thy gay morn of life o'ercast,
        Chill came the tempest's lower;
    (And ne'er misfortune's eastern blast
        Did nip a fairer flower.)

    Since life's gay scenes must charm no more,
        Still much is left behind;
    Still nobler wealth hast thou in store,
        The comforts of the mind!

    Thine is the self-approving glow,
        On conscious honour's part;
    And, dearest gift of heaven belo...

In mezzo di duo amanti onesta altera.

LAURA TURNING TO SALUTE HIM, THE SUN, THROUGH JEALOUSY, WITHDREW BEHIND A CLOUD.


    'Tween two fond lovers I a lady spied,
Virtuous but haughty, and with her that lord,
By gods above and men below adored--
The sun on this, myself upon that side--
Soon as she found herself the sphere denied
Of her bright friend, on my fond eyes she pour'd
A flood of life and joy, which hope restored
Less cold to me will be her future pride.
Suddenly changed itself to cordial mirth
The jealous fear to which at his first sight
So high a rival in my heart gave birth;
As suddenly his sad and rueful plight
From further scrutiny a small cloud veil'd,
So much it ruffled him that then he fail'd.

MACGREGOR.

(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE.)
INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER.


I.
White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops that plead for pardon
And pine for fright
Because the hard East blows
Over their maiden rows
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

Behind the veil, forbidden,
Shut up from sight,
Love, is there sorrow hidden,
Is there delight?
Is joy thy dower or grief,
White rose of weary leaf,
Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?

Soft snows that hard winds harden
Till each flake bite
Fill all the flowerless garden
Whose flowers took flight
Long since when summer ceased,
And men rose up from feast,
And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.

II.<...

The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling
In a dim library, just behind the chair
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling
A song about some Lovers at a Fair,
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there.

And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking
About the tragic poem I'd been writing,...
An old man's life of beer and whisky drinking,
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;
And how at last, into a fever sinking,
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.

But suddenly I saw the bright green cover
Of a thin pretty book right down below;
I snatched it up and turned the pages over,
To find it full of poetry, and so
Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,
And turn...

What saw I yesterday walking apart
In a leafy place where the cattle wait?
Something to keep for a charm in my heart -
A little sweet girl in a garden gate.
Laughing she lay in the gold sun's might,
And held for a target to shelter her,
In her little soft fingers, round and white,
The gold-rimmed face of a sunflower.

Laughing she lay on the stone that stands
For a rough-hewn step in that sunny place,
And her yellow hair hung down to her hands,
Shadowing over her dimpled face.
Her eyes like the blue of the sky, made dim
With the might of the sun that looked at her,
Shone laughing over the serried rim,
Golden set, of the sunflower.

Laughing, for token she gave to me
Three petals out of the sunflower; -
When the petals are withered and gone,...

I.

The sun has sunk in the crimson west,
    And "around the languid eyes of day"
The Twilight's dreamy shadows rest
    And light and shade alternate play;
The winds are hushed, nor leaf nor flower
Is swayed with motion by their power.


II.

The fireflies with meteor lamps
    Arise from out the dewy lawn,
And there the elfin cricket chants
    His vespers when the day is gone,
And far above, the sky's coquette
With all her starry train is met.

Se 'l sasso ond' è più chiusa questa valle.

COULD HE BUT SEE THE HOUSE OF LAURA, HIS SIGHS MIGHT REACH HER MORE QUICKLY.


    If, which our valley bars, this wall of stone,
From which its present name we closely trace,
Were by disdainful nature rased, and thrown
Its back to Babel and to Rome its face;
Then had my sighs a better pathway known
To where their hope is yet in life and grace:
They now go singly, yet my voice all own;
And, where I send, not one but finds its place.
There too, as I perceive, such welcome sweet
They ever find, that none returns again,
But still delightedly with her remain.
My grief is from the eyes, each morn to meet--
Not the fair scenes my soul so long'd to see--
Toil for my weary limbs and tears for me.