Birds in reverberating flocksHaunt its ancestral box;Bright are the plenteous berriesIn clusters in the air.Still is the fountain’s music,The dark pool icy still,Whereupon a small and sanguine sunFloats in a mirror on,Into a West of crimson,From a South of daffodil.’Tis strange to see young childrenIn such a wintry house;Like rabbits’ on the frozen snowTheir tell-tale…
That whatever Miss T eatsTurns into Miss T.;Porridge and apples,Mince, muffins and mutton,Jam, junket, jumbles –Not a rap, not a buttonIt matters; the momentThey’re out of her plate,Though shared by Miss ButcherAnd sour Mr. Bate;Tiny and cheerful,And neat as can be,Whatever Miss T. eatsTurns into Miss T.
Yet, on the silence of her heart,Haply, if a strange footfall start,Or a chance word of ecstasyCry through dim cloistered memory,Into her eyes her soul will stealTo gaze into the irrevocable —As if death had not power to keepOne who has loved her long asleep.Now all things lovely she looks onSeem lovely in oblivion;And all…
The reeds and rushesBy the river:Ever, ever,As if in dream,The lone moon’s silverSleeks the stream.What old sorrow,What lost love,Moon, reeds, rushes,Dream you of?
And clouds like sheepStream o’er the steepGrey skies where the lark was.Nought warm where your hand was,Nought gold where your hair was,But phantom, forlorn,Beneath the thorn,Your ghost where your face was.Cold wind where your voice was,Tears, tears where my heart was,And ever with me,Child, ever with me,Silence where hope was.
Dry August burned. A harvest hareLimp on the kitchen table lay,Its fur blood-blubbered, eye astare,While a small child that stood near byWept out her heart to see it there.Sharp came the clop of hoofs, the clangOf dangling chain, voices that rangOut like a leveret she ran,To feast her glistening bird-clear eyesOn a team of field…
Beyond the rumour even of Paradise come,There, out of all remembrance, make our home:Seek we some close hid shadow for our lair,Hollowed by Noah’s mouse beneath the chairWherein the Omnipotent, in slumber bound,Nods till the piteous Trump of Judgment sound.Perchance Leviathan of the deep seaWould lease a lost mermaiden’s grot to me,There of your beauty…
The holly mid ten thousand thornsSmoulders its fires away;And in the manger Jesus sleepsThis Christmas Day.Bull unto bull with hollow throatMakes echo every hill,Cold sheep in pastures thick with snowThe air with bleating fill;While of his mother’s heart this BabeTakes His sweet will.All flowers and butterflies lie hid,The blackbird and the thrushPipe but a little…
On the roofs, walls, belfriesOf the foundered town,The Nereids pluck their lyresWhere the green translucency beats,And with motionless eyes at gazeMake ministrely in the streets.And the ocean water stirsIn salt-worn casement and porch.Plies the blunt-nosed fishWith fire in his skull for torch.And the ringing wires resound;And the unearthly lovely weep,In lament of the music they…
‘Can’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden;But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still,And the ivy-tod neath the empty sill,And never from her window looked out Mrs. GillOn the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden.‘What have they done with you, you poor Mrs. Gill?’Quoth…
