Category Poem

        A time there was — as one may guessAnd as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell —        Before the birth of consciousness,               When all went well.      …

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,Mile after mile out by the moorland way,And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze grayInto the lane, and round the corner tree; Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred,And the enfeebled light dies…

There was a time in former years—  While my roof-tree was his—When I should have been distressed by fears  At such a night as this!I should have murmured anxiously,  ‘The prickling rain strikes cold;His road is bare of hedge or…

She told how they used to form for the country dances —       “The Triumph,” “The New-rigged Ship” —To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses,       And in cots to the blink of a…

I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where       A maiden one fain would guardFrom every hazard and every care       Advanced on the roadside sward. I wondered how succeeding suns       Would shape her wayfarings,And wished some Power…

I We work here together         In blast and breeze;He fills the earth in,         I hold the trees. He does not notice         That what I doKeeps me from moving         And chills me through. He has seen one fairer         I feel by…

         In the middle of the nightMother’s spirit came and spoke to me,         Looking weariful and white —As ’twere untimely news she broke to me.          “O my daughter, joyed are…

There’s no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped          Does she require. Blankly we gaze. We are free to go…

When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, And Life’s bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, My perished people who housed them here come back to…

I do not see the hills around,Nor mark the tints the copses wear;I do not note the grassy groundAnd constellated daisies there. I hear not the contralto noteOf cuckoos hid on either hand,The whirr that shakes the nighthawk’s throatWhen eve’s…