---

• Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing-fold,
• And in the hollowed haystack at its side
• The shepherd lies o'nights now, wakeful-eyed
• At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.
• The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o'the old:
• And near unpeopled streamsides, on the ground,
• By her spring-cry the moorhen's nest is found,
• Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.

• Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
• 10 And chill the current where the young reeds stand
• As green and close as the young wheat on land:
• Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
• Pledge to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour
• Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.

---

   

---

• How dear the sky has been above this place!
• Small treasures of this sky that we see here
• Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year;
• Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace
• To save, and tears that stayed along the face
• Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear,
• Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear
• The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space.

• So was it, till one night the secret kept
• 10 Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor
• Was blown abroad upon swift tongues on gospel-tongues of flame.
• O ways of God, mysterious evermore!
• How many on this spot have cursed & wept
• That all might stand here now & own thy Name.

   

• How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree!
• A swarm of such, three little months ago,
• Had hidden in the leaves and let none know
• Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy.
• The A white flake here and there—a snow-lily
• Of last night's frost—our naked flower-beds hold;
• And for a rose-flower on the purple darkling mould
• The redbreast gleams, —poor hungry wanderer he!

• The current rattles at its shudders to its ice-bound sedge:
• 10 Where the ice splits Nipped in their bath, the stiff stark reeds one by one
• Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun:
Deleted Text
Like wealthy withered fingers: while the sedge
Sails to the blast which for this winter's pledge
Shall leave memorial forest-king's o'erthrown.
While winds afar, for winter's sovereign pledge
While winds as far &c.
Added Text
'Neath gales winds which for this winter's sovereign pledge
Shall curb great king-masts to the water's ocean's edge
And leave memorial forest-king's o'erthrown.

   

---

• From him did forty thousand million serfs, endow'd
• Each with six feet of death- claimed due soil, receive
• Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave
• Their country's harvest. Who today aloud
• Demand of Heaven their Father's blood,—sore bow'd
• With tears and thrilled with wrath; and born to achieve,
• On every guilty head without reprieve
• All torment by his edicts disallow'd.

• He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; & first
• 10 Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
• White to the tomb. While he,—laid foully low
• With limbs red-lopped, with blood-clogged brain which nurs'd
• The His nation's charter,—from full Nihil flown,
• No Nought now finds now,— a God's [?] at God's the throne.

---

   

• And not more lightly or more true
• Fall there the dancers' feet
• Than fall her cards on upon the bright board
• With As 'twere a heart's measured that beat.

• Deftly The fingers let them softly softly through,—
• Smooth polished easy/? silent things;
• And each one as it fell falls reflects

   

---

• God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
• In the broad ? with ? hear Nature sing
  Added TextThen heard I sounds as though the Earth did sing
• Even as a calm bird doth upon the wing And the Earth's angel cried upon the wing:
• I saw priests fall together and turn white,
• And covered in the dust from the sun's sight
• A king I spied, and yet another king.
• I said: “The round world keeps its balancing:
• On this globe, they and we are opposite,—
• If it is day with us, with them 'tis night.”
• 10 Still, France, in thy just pride, remember this:—
• Thou hadst not made that thy sons' sons shall ask
• What the word king may mean in their day's task,—
• But for the light that led: and if light is,
• It is because God said, Let there be light.

               

• Could you not drink her eyes gaze like wine?—
• [?] there [?] air

   

• Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
• Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
• Ere Grecian Venus Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
• Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
• Of bliss whereof the earth and heaven and earth commune:
• And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
• Love-freighted lips, and absolute eyes that wean
• The pulse of hearts to the sphere's dominant tune.

• Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
• 10 All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea,
• The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
• That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
• Amulet, talisman and oracle,—
• Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

• and eyes that see the unseen,—
• Their gaze instinct with the sphere's dominant tune.

   

---

• Lung i è la luce che in sù questo muro
• Mi giunge Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta
• Del mio rio palazzo alla lontana soprana porta.
• Lungi quei fiori d'Enna, O lido oscuro,
• Dal frutto tuo fatal per cui Snaturo che omai mè duro
• Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto
• Che quì mi cuopre: e lungi ahi lungi ahi quanto
• Le notti che saran dai dì che furo!

• Lungi da me mi sento; e ognor sognando,
• 10 Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice;
• E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice,
• (Di cui mi giunge il suon di quando in quando,
• Continuamente insieme sospirando,)—
• “Oimè per te, Proserpina infelice!”

   

---

• The head and hands of murdered Cicero,
• Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
• Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
• Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,
• Fluvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show
• Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
• Bade her sharp needle pierce that godlike tongue
• Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow.

• Ah! And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid
• 10Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid
• Dead hope!— and hast thou too reached, surviving death,
• Our A city of sweet speech scorned,—on whose chill stone
• Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton,
• Breadless, with poison froze the God- deriv'd fired breath?

---

       

• Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
• Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine arms, and cry
• From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
• See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
• He most whom that fair woman arms, and now with show
• Clenches her angry Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
• This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
• The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.

• No What eyes, no what ears hath sweet Andromache,
• 10 Save for her Hector's form and step?—as dear
• Thrice dear, his mouth that owns yet feels the kiss she gave?
• He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
• Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
• Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.
• as dear
• Thrice dear, her arms still clasp the babe he gave.
• as spear
• And helm [?], the face of Fate to brave.
• as tear
• On tear make salt the sweet warm last kiss he gave.

   

• Even so, great Hector, go! Yea, “O Hector, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
• Two chariots wait, in Troy long blessed & curs'd;
• And Grecian sword and Phrygian sand athirst
• Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
• One brand upon our hearth long time had we,
• Lit for the roof-tree's ruin. Lo! to-day
• The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
• And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.

• O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
• 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
• Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
• Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
• Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
• Stretch Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.”

   

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
• Till music died upon fainted on the inveterate sea
• Say, soul, and doth no fatal song for us,
• Prove yet than any crown more rapturous,
• No d Death's lip shame the cheek of Victory?

   

• “There is a budding morrow in midnight:”—
• So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
• And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
• In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
• Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight
• Of love deflowered & sorrow of none avail
• Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
• Can day with from darkness ever again unite take flight ever again grow light?

• Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
• 10Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge
• In gloaming courtship? And alas O God! to-day
• He does but only knows he holds her;— and but what part
• Life Can life now can take? She cries in her own locked heart,— in her shut heart
• “Leave me—I do not know you—go away!”

   

• “Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
• Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreathe, lips, and cheek.
• Nay, not this house,— yon that banquet-house we seek;
• See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
• This delicate day of love we now two will share
• Added TextTill at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
• And hear love's night in musical numbers speak
• What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak?
• Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.”

• “Oh loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face
• 10 That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
• My hair, my tears I bring He craves to-day:—and oh!
• What words can tell what other day and place
• Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His?
• He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!”

   

• Song shall tell how glad and strong
• Is the night she soothes alway;
• Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
• Of the brazen hours of day:
• Sounds as of the springtide they,
• Moan and song,
• While the chill months long for May.

   

• Uncertain-aged Miss Thereabouts,
• Tough fossil of her teens,
• Has lifted up with saving hand
• The ruined Smithereens.

• Down the dark steps of debt that hand
• Sped like an angel's wing,
• Deep dowered with gold, & for itself
• Brought back a golden ring.

• Ah lovely Lucy Lovandove,
• 10 That ring's a snake, and means
• Woe without end: therein lies crushed
• Thy heart—to smithereens!

   

• My soul this hour has drawn thy soul
• A little nearer yet.

---

• And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
• That wavers with the spirit's wind.

---

           

• Yon' Cur's not rid of his own name,
• Though he to others give the same.
• Yon Yelper Scribbler leaves his works to the
• Posteriors of Posterity;
• Though sounds may reach him from the sphere
• Which seem to his long listening ears
• Most like the trumpet-blast of Fame.

---

   

• Se ne va la gioventù
• Vidi come se ne va

---

   

• The A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
• Memorial from the Soul's eternity
• To one dead deathless hour—

---

   

---

   

• That tempest had its pebble dropped
• A hundred miles at sea &c.

   

• How callous seems beyond revoke
• The clock with its last listless stroke!
• How much too late at length!—to snatch
• A glance at the returning patch,
• The thing for hours thou [???] darest not do!
• 20 This may Behold, this may be thus! Ere true
• It prove, arise and bear thy yoke.
• spoke/broke

   

• Who knoweth not love's sounds and silences?

---

   

---

   

• The golden kingcup-fields with silence edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

---

   

---

   

• One bliss but tarries for another's birth;
• As the last cowslip in the fields we see
• With the first corn-poppy.

---

   

---

   

• As balmy as the breath of her you love
• When deep between her breasts it comes to you.

---

   

• Some close-companioned inarticulate hour
• Whose When twofold silence was the song of love.

---

   

• Her hands lay open in the long deep grass,
• And the sweet points looked through like rosy flowers

   

• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little at his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought in his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live:—

---

   

• I looked and saw the love
• At the bottom of your heart
• As a diver sees a pearl
• At the bottom of the sea:

• And I murmured, not above
• My breath, but all apart,
• Ah! she can love, sweet girl,
• And does love, and loves me.

---

   

---

   

---

   

• the fire
• Put forth its withering fingers of pure flame

---

   

• O happy he for whom first love & last
• Are but one love for ever!

   

• With furnaces
• Of instant flame & petals of pure light

---

   

---

   

• Deep in the sun-searched grass the dragon-fly
• Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky

---

   

---

 

• Even as the dreariest swamps, in sweet Springtide,
• Are most with Mary-flowers beatified

   

---

 

• Or reading in some sunny nook
• Where grass-blade shadows fall across her book.

---

 

• On the first day the priest
• Could find no heart in the beast
• ?
  Added TextAnd two on the second day.

---

   

• I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ”
• (One said) “with mine own eye.
• She hung in a cage ^x & read her rune ^x
• To all the passers-by:
• Said the boys, ‘What wouldst thou, Sibyl?’
• She answered ‘I would die.’”

---

   

---

   

---

   

• Where the poets all,
• Echoes of singing nature, list her call.

---

   

---

   

• The loves that from our hands have dropped away,
• Even as the beads of a told rosary.

---

---

   

• Of natural foods she nothing needs,
• A grain of rice rice a day

---

   

• The kine might stem the tide & live
• The nags might take no ill,
• But it's woe the day for a fair woman
• Laid half-way up the hill.

• All white & still & dumb she lay
• 10Six spans above the flood
• It's “Janet, if ye be yourself,
• Rise in the name of God!”

• Often he's met her by the bank
• And often by the brae,
• And raced with her in April rains
• And passed the birds in May.

---

• But woe's my heart ever near for Father John
• And the saints he clamoured to:
• [???] There's never a saint but Christopher
• To Might hale such buttocks through!

---

• “They told me you were dead, Janet,—
• So long you left from me.”
• “They told me you were false, Lord Sands,
• And I came here to die?”

   

• Beside a Before some [fresh?] Madonna newly decked,
• Tinselled & gewgawed, a slight German toy,
• I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
• She rose, and side by side we left the church.
• I was much moved, & sharply questioned her
• Of her transferred devotion; and at best but she seemed
• Stubborn and ? heedless; till she lightly laughed
• And “Aye, the old Madonna?” so she said,
• She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.”
• 10 Then silent to the soul I walked with her held my way

• And from the fountains of the public place
• Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
• Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
• And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
• She stepped went, with well-poised feet & gleaming arms
• And hands held light before her; and the face
• Which long had made a day in all my life's night
• Seemed night in day to me; as all men's eyes
• Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
• 20 Beyond the my heart to the world made for her.

• Father, the day I speak of was the first
• For weeks that I had borne her company
• Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
• Much troubled, for then first the thought arose
• That she so loved was growing changed & cold. [?]
• And as we loitered on that day, I bent
• My eyes on the fair image, and I said
• Within my heart, “Oh warm her heart to me!”
• And so I left her to her prayers, and went
• 30 To gaze on the great upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
• Where in the sacristy the day still falls
• Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
• How long the night, how fallen on the ?
  Added TextOn whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
• That make it/ May ? upon another head to crown The hour gilds another head to crown.
• But coming back, I wondered when I saw
• The image [?] Lady sovereign [?]That image stand alone; and till further off

• Yet one more only thought in my mind thing comes back on me tonight
• Were worth the ?/telling Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
• Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
• 40 It cha happened once when then that in our wanderings
• We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
• If home we had: and in the Duomo there
• I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
• There was/There dwells a sweet An image of Our Lady dwells there, wrought
• In marble by some great Italian hand
• In the great days when she and Italy
• Sat on one throne together: and by him to her
• She stood ? and told ?
  Added TextAnd to none else my loved one told her heart.
• And many thoughts She was a woman then; And as she knelt below the sacred fane
• 50 They seemed Her sweet brow in the neighbour's shadow there,—
• They seemed two kindred things kindred forms that our dear land
• Added Text(Whose work still serves the world for miracles)
• Blent with herself in wondrous ?

   

• The flood was creeping round their feet.
• “O Janet come, love, come away!
• The hall is warm for the marriage-rite,
• The bed for the birthday.”

• “Nay, but I hear your mother cry,
• ‘Go, bring this bride to bed!
• And would she christen her babe unborn,
• So wet she comes to wed?’

• “I'll be your wife to cross your door s
• 10 And meet your mother's e'e.
• We plighted troth to wed i' the kirk,
• And it's there I'll wed with ye.”