To the lonely manor-lady
By the light of the Christmas moon.
We violed till, upward glancing
To where a mirror leaned,
We saw her airily dancing,
Deeming her movements screened;
Dancing alone in the room there,
Thin-draped in her robe of night;
Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,
Were a strange phantasmal sight.
She had learnt (we heard when homing)
That her roving spouse was dead;
Why she had danced in the gloaming
We thought, but never said.
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, wherebyI may picture her there;And in vain do I urge my unsightTo conceive my lost prizeAt her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,And with laughter her eyes.What scenes spread around her last days,Sad, shining, or dim?Did her gifts and…
How happy days are made to be!‘Of such strange tidings what think ye,O birds in brown that peck and preen?Men know but little more than we!‘When I was borne from yonder treeIn bonds to them, I hoped to gleanHow happy days are made to be,‘And want and wailing turned to glee;Alas, despite their mighty mienMen…
— ‘No: yesterday he went to wedOne of the brightest wealth has bred.‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,‘That I should not be true.”‘Then who is digging on my grave,My nearest dearest kin?’— ‘Ah, no: they sit and think, ‘What use!What good will planting flowers produce?No tendance of her mound can looseHer spirit from Death’s…
When men adored thee and thy waysAll else above;Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the OneWho spread a heaven beneath the sun,’I said to Love.I said to him,‘We now know more of thee than then;We were but weak in judgment when,With hearts abrim,We clamoured thee that thou would’st pleaseInflict on us thine agonies,’I said to…
And never a nightingale pours oneFull-throated sound?Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,Thought you to find all just the sameHere shining, as in hours of old,If you but came?What will you do in your surpriseAt seeing that changes wrought in RomeAre wrought yet more on the misty slopeOne time your home?Will you wake…
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to winConvincing triumphs over neighbour lands,Vaster battalions press for further strands,To argue in the self-same bloody modeWhich this late age of thought, and pact, and code,Still fails to mend.–Now deckward tramp the bands,Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;And as each host draws out upon the seaBeyond which lies the…
