See, Winter comes to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train— Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme, These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot, Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life, When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain; Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure; Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst; Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time, Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York Looking for help for you, Nicanor. But my few friends who are rich or influential were temporarily absent from their penthouses or hotel suites. They had gone to the opera, or flown for the weekend to Bermuda. At last I found one or two of them at home, preparing for social engagements, absently smiling, as they tried on gown after gown
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round, The wind is up, and drives the rain; While, hark! far down, with strangled sound Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods, Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth Upon the sides of mirth, Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs Upon the flesh to cleave, Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, And many sorrows after each his wise For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.
O Love's lute heard about the lands of death, Left hanged upon the trees that were therein; O Love and Time and Sin, Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same A lov'd regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny— A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
Ugliest little boy that everyone ever saw. That is what everyone said.
Even to his mother it was apparent— when the blue-aproned nurse came into the northeast end of the maternity ward bearing his squeals and plump bottom looped up in a scant receiving blanket,
Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems
I first discovered what was killing these men. I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel: Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17. They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work for the mines were not going much of the time. A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew, he formed a habit of dropping in evenings to drink, persuading the boys and my husband —
Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant. Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; Let your head lean Back to the shoulder with its fleece Of locks, Faustine.
And this is what is left of youth! . . . There were two boys, who were bred up together, Shared the same bed, and fed at the same board; Each tried the other’s sport, from their first chase, Young hunters of the butterfly and bee, To when they followed the fleet hare, and tried The swiftness of the bird. They lay beside The silver trout stream, watching as the sun
While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields, Trembles upon the thin, and naked spray, November, dragging on this sunless day, Lours, cold and sullen, on the watery fields; And Nature to the waste dominion yields, Stripped her last robes, with gold and purple gay — So droops my life, of your soft beams despoiled, Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smiled; And the wild carols, and the bloomy hues Of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain Her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, More pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse Than Winter’s grey, and desolate domain Faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
—Was it for this That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou, O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
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