The first shy bat to peep at eveHas found her to his liking.The western heaven is dull and grey,The last red glow has followed day.The late, last rook is housed and willWith cronies lie till morrow;If there’s a rook loquacious stillIn dream he hunts a furrow,And flaps behind a spectre team,Or ghostly scarecrows walk his…
IBabylon where I go dreamingWhen I weary of to-day,Weary of a world grown gray.IIGod loves an idle rainbow,No less than laboring seas.IIIReason has moons, but moons not hersLie mirrored on her sea,Confounding her astronomers,But, oh, delighting me!
Blind sons and breastless daughters of the blindWhose darkness pardons his, –About the world, while all the world approves,The pimp of Fashion steals,With all the angels mourning their dead lovesBehind his bloody heels.It my be late when Nature cries Enough!As one day cry she will,And man may have the wit to put her offWith shifts…
And burrow in the mould and mustOf Babylon for bric-a-brac;Who catalogue and pigeon-holeThe faded splendours of her soulAnd put her greatness under glass –If you could bring her past to pass!If you could bring her dead to life!The soldier lad; the market wife;Madam buying fowls from her;Tip, the butcher’s bandy cur;Workmen carting bricks and clay;Babel…
A man who carried in his soulThree charms against disaster,The Devil and disaster.Away, away, and tell the taleAnd start your whelps a-whining,Say ‘In the greenwood of his soulA lizard’s eye was shining,A little eye kept shining.’Away, away, and salve your sores,And set your hags a-groaning,Say ‘In the greenwood of his soulA drowsy bee was droning,A…
Put up your caravanJust for one day?All things I’ll give youWill you be my guest,Bells for your jennetOf silver the best,Goldsmiths shall beat youA great golden ring,Peacocks shall bow to you,Little boys sing.Oh, and sweet girls willFestoon you with may,Time, you old gypsy,Why hasten away?Last week in Babylon,Last night in Rome,Morning, and in the crushUnder…
To sit alone among the bats and stareAt miles and miles and miles of moorland bareLit only with last shreds of dying day.Not all the world, not all the world’s gone by:Old man, you’re like to meet one traveller still,A journeyman well kenned for courtesyTo all that walk at odds with life and limb;If this…
He shut his eyes and counted –We hid among the hay –Then he a haycock mounted,And spied us where we lay;And O! the merry laughterAcross the hayfield after!
And filled the trees and flapped and foughtAnd sang themselves to sleep;An owl from nowhere with no soundSwung by and soon was nowhere found,I heard him calling half-way round,Holloing loud and deep;A pair of stars, faint pins of light,Then many a star, sailed into sight,And all the stars, the flower of night,Were round me at…
This valley’s not the blissful spot,The paradise, it seems.I don’t forget a man I metBeneath this very tree, –The cooing of that cushat doveBrings back his face to me, –The merest lad, a sullen, sad,Unhappy soul with eyes half mad,Most sorrowful to see.I asked him who he was, and what;‘Twas his affair, he answered, that,And…
