Now hollow fires burn out to black,

Empty heads and tongues a-talkingMake the rough road easy walking,And the feather pate of follyBears the falling sky.Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinkingSpins the heavy world around.If young hearts were not so clever,Oh, they would be young for ever:Think no more; ’tis only thinkingLays lads underground.

Still, I think, in newer veinsFrets the changeless blood of man.Now that other lads than IStrip to bathe on Severn shore,They, no help, for all they try,Tread the mill I trod before.There, when hueless is the westAnd the darkness hushes wide,Where the lad lies down to restStands the troubled dream beside.There, on thoughts that once…

Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.But over sea and continent from sightSafe to the Indies has the earth conveyedThe vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.‘Tis silent, and…

Under the bridge it murmurs by,And here are night and hell and I.Who made the world I cannot tell;‘Tis made, and here I am in hell.My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,I never soiled with such a deed.And so, no doubt, in time gone by,Some have suffered more than I,Who only spend the night aloneAnd…

I brought them home unheeded;The hue was not the wear.So up and down I sow themFor lads like me to find,When I shall lie below them,A dead man out of mind.Some seed the birds devour,And some the season mars,But here and there will flower,The solitary stars,And fields will yearly bear themAs light-leaved spring comes on,And…

Black towers above the Portland lightThe felon-quarried stone.On yonder island, not to rise,Never to stir forth free,Far from his folk a dead lad liesThat once was friends with me.Lie you easy, dream you light,And sleep you fast for aye;And luckier may you find the nightThan ever you found the day.

The aspen over stile and stoneWas talking to itself alone.‘Oh who are these that kiss and pass?A country lover and his lass;Two lovers looking to be wed;And time shall put them both to bed,But she shall lie with earth above,And he beside another love.’And sure enough beneath the treeThere walks another love with me,And overhead…

And long I used to stand and lookAt things I could not buy.Now times are altered: if I careTo buy a thing, I can;The pence are here and here’s the fair,But where’s the lost young man?– – To think that two and two are fourAnd neither five nor threeThe heart of man has long been…

I hear my bones within me say,‘Another night, another day.‘When shall this slough of sense be cast,This dust of thoughts be laid at last,The man of flesh and soul be slainAnd the man of bone remain?‘This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout,These thews that hustle us about,This brain that fills the skull with schemes,And…

Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,Count you to find? Not me.The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,The true, sick-hearted slave,Expect him not in the just cityAnd free land of the grave.

Quick, and if ’tis work for two,Here am I man: now’s your time.Send me now, and I shall go;Call me, I shall hear you call;Use me ere they lay me lowWhere a man’s no use at all;Ere the wholesome flesh decayAnd the willing nerve be numb,And the lips lack breath to say,‘No, my lad, I…

And the hope of man as wellFlowers among the morning dews.Now the old come out to look,Winter past and winter’s pains,How the sky in pool and brookGlitters on the grassy plains.Easily the gentle airWafts the turning season on;Things to comfort them are there,Though ’tis true the best are gone.Now the scorned unlucky ladRousing from his…