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While joy gave clouds the light of stars,That beamed where'er they looked;And calves and lambs had tottering knees,Excited, while they sucked;While every bird enjoyed his song,Without one thought of harm or wrong —I turned my head and saw the wind,Not far from where I stood,Dragging the corn by her golden hair,Into a dark and lonely wood.
Playing figure silhouetted
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My song, that's bird-like in its kind,Is in the mind,Love — in the mind;And in my season I am movedNo more or less from being loved;No woman's love has power to bringMy song back when I cease to sing;Nor can she, when my season's strong,Prevent my mind from song.But where I feel your woman's part,Is in the heart,Love — in the heart;For when that bird of mine broods long,And I'd be sad without my song,Your love then makes my heart a brookThat dreams in many a quiet nook,And makes a steady, murmuring soundOf joy the whole year round.
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With mighty leaps and bounds,I followed Passion's hounds,My hot blood had its day;Lust, Gluttony, and Drink,I chased to Hell's black brink,Both night and day.I ate like three strong men,I drank enough for ten,Each hour must have its glassYes, Drink and GluttonyHave starved more brains, say I,Than Hunger has.And now, when I grow old,And my slow blood is cold,And feeble is my breath —I'm followed by those hounds,Whose mighty leaps and boundsHunt me to death.
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Since I have seen a bird one day,His head pecked more than half away;That hopped about, with but one eye,Ready to fight again, and die —Ofttimes since then their private livesHave spoilt that joy their music gives.So, when I see this robin now,Like a red apple on the bough,And question why he sings so strong,For love, or for the love of song;Or sings, maybe, for that sweet rillWhose silver tongue is never still —Ah, now there comes this thought unkind,Born of the knowledge in my mind:He sings in triumph that last nightHe killed his father in a fight;And now he'll take his mother's blood —The last strong rival for his food.
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Have I now found an angel in Unrest,That wakeful Love is more desired than sleep:Though you seem calm and gentle, you shall showThe force of this strong love in me so deep.Yes, I will make you, though you seem so calm,Look from your blue eyes that divinest joyAs was in Juno's, when she made great JoveForget the war and half his heaven in Troy.And I will press your lips until they mixWith my poor quality their richer wine:Be my Parnassus now, and grow more greenEach upward step towards your top divine.
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Though I was born in April's prime,With many another lamb,Yet, thinking now of all my years,What am I but a tough old ram?"No woman thinks of years," said she,"Or any tough old rams,When she can hear a voice that bleatsAs tenderly as any lamb's."
A piper on the hill
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We never feel the lust of steelOr fury-woken blood,We live and die and wonder whyIn mud, and mud, and mud,And horror first and horror lastAnd Phantom Terror riding past.We hear and hear the hounds of FearNearer and more near.We feel their breath....Only the nights befriendAnd mitigate the hell;Of those who ponder, see and hear,Too well.The nights, and Death —The end.We feel but never fearHis breath.Day after weary day,In vain, in vain, in vain,We turn to Thee and pray,We cry and cry again —"O lord of Battle, whyShould we alone be sane?"We stifle cries with lightless eyesAnd face eternal night;We stifle cries to sacrificeOur eyes for Human Sight.And many give that men may live,A life, a limb, a brain,That fellow men may understandAnd be for ever sane.What matter if we lose a handIf others wander hand in hand;Or lose a foot if others greetThe dawn of peace with dancing feet;What matter if we die unheardIf others hear the Poet's Word?Because we pay from day to dayThe price of sacrifice;Because we face each dreary placeAgain, again, again.Lord, set us free from Sanity —Who feel no fighting thrill;Must we remain for ever saneAnd never learn to kill?No answer came. In very shameOur long-unheeded cryGrew bitterly more bitterly,"O why, O why, O why.May we not feel the lust of steelThe fury-woken thrill —For men may learn to live and dieAnd never learn to kill?"
October, 1918
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The day you died, my Share of AllMy soul was tossedHither and thither, like a leaf,And lost, lost, lost,From sounds and sight,Beneath the nightOf gloom and grief.But —(Hush, for the wind may hear)Soon, soon you came in solitude:And we renewedAll happiness.Now, who shall guessHow close we are, my dear?(Hush, for the wind may hear.)Yet —Other women waitTheir doors ajar;And listen, listen, listen,For the gate,And murmur, "Soon, the warWill seem a far,Dim agony of sleep."May I be joyful, too,That day,For love of youMay I not turn awayNor — weep.
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Thrush, across the twilightHere in the abbey close,Pouring from your lilac-boughNote on pebbled note,Why do you sing so,Making your song so bright.Swelling to a throbbing curveThat brave little throat?Soon, but a season brief,The lice among your feathers,Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed,With song dead you shall fall;Refuse of some clotted ditch,Seeking no more berries;Why with lyric numbers nowDo you the twilight call?Proud in your tawny plumesMottled in devising,Singing as though never sangBird in close till now —Sharp are the javelinsOf death that are seeking,Seeking even simple birdsOn a lilac-bough.Crushed, forlorn, a frozen thing,For no more nesting,For no more speckled eggsIn pattered cup of clay, —Soon your song shall come to thisYou who make the twilight yours,And echoes of the abbey,At the end of day.In the song I hear it,The thud of a poor feathered death,In the swelling throat I seeThe splintering of song —What demon then has worked in meTo tease my brain to bitterness —In me who have loved bird and treeSo long, so long?Until I come to charity,Until I find peace again,My curse upon the fiend or godThat will not let me hearA bird in song upon the boughBut, hovering about the notes,There chimes the maniac beatingOf black-winged fear.
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What will the years tell?Hush! If it would but speak —That shadow athwart the stream,In the gloom of a dream;Could my brain but spellThe thought in the brain of that weakOld ghost that hides in the gloom,Over there, of the chestnut bloom.I sit in the broad June lightOn the open bank of the river,In the summer of manhood, young;And over the water brightIs a lair that is overhungWith coned pink blooms that quiverAnd droop, till the water's breastIs of petal and leaf caressed.And the June sky glares on my prime —But there in the gloom, with Time,Huddled, with Time on its back,Is a shadow that is my wrack.Yes, it is I in the lair,Peering and watching me there.Under the chestnut bloomMy old age hides in the gloom.And the years to be have been,Could I spell the lore of that brain.But the river flows between,Over the weeds of pain,Over the snares of death,Maybe, should I leap to hold,With myself grown old,Council there in the gloomUnder the chestnut bloom.And so, with instruction none,I go, and leave it there,My ghost with Time in its lair,And the things that must yet be doneTear at my heart unknown,And the years have tongues of stoneWith no syllable to makeFor consolation's sake.But peradventure yetI shall returnTo dare the weeds of death,And plunge through the coned pink bloom,And cry on that spectre setIn its silent ring of gloom,And stay my youth to learnThe thing that my old age saith.
Cartwheeling figures silhouetted
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The shepherd sings: —"Way down in Dixie,Way down in Dixie,Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay..."With shaded eyes he stands to lookAcross the hills where the clouds swoon,He singing, leans upon his crook,He sings, he sings no more.The wind is muffled in the tangled hairsOf sheep that drift along the noon.One mild sheep staresWith amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June.Two skylarks soarWith singing flameInto the sun whence first they came.All else is only grasshoppersOr a brown wing the shepherd stirs,Who, like a tall tree moving, goesWhere the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.See! the sun smitesWith sea-drawn lightsThe turned wing of a gull that glowsAslant the violet, the profoundDome of the mid-June heights.Alas! again the grasshoppers,The birds, the slumber-winging bees,Alas! again for those and theseDemure and sweet things drowned;Drowned in vain raucous words men madeWhere no lark rose with swift and sweetAscent and where no dim sheep strayedAbout the stone immensities,Where no sheep strayed and where no beesProbed any flowers nor swung a bladeOf grass with pollened feet.He sings: —"In Dixie,Way down in Dixie,Where the hens are dog-gone glad to layScrambled eggs in the new-mown hay..."The herring-gulls with peevish criesRebuke the man who sings vain words;His sheep-dog growls a low complaint,Then turns to chasing butterflies.But when the indifferent singing-birdsFrom midmost down to dimmest shoreInnumerably confirm their songs,And grasshoppers make summer rhymeAnd solemn bees in the wild thymeClash cymbals and beat gongs,The shepherd's words once more are faint,The shepherd's song once more is thinnedUpon the long course of the wind,He sings, he sings no more.Ah, now the sweet monotoniesOf bells that jangle on the sheepTo the low limit of the hills!Till the blue cup of music spillsInto the boughs of lowland trees;Till thence the lowland singings creepInto the silenced shepherd's head,Creep drowsily through his blood:The young thrush fluting all he knows,The ring-dove moaning his false woes,Almost the rabbit's tiny tread,The last unfolding bud.But now,Now a cool word spreads out along the sea.Now the day's violet is cloud-tipped with gold.Now dusk most silentlyFills the hushed day with other wings than birds'.Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock,To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence.So too the shepherd gathers in his flock,Because birds journey to their dens,Tired sheep to their still fold.A dark first bat swoops low and dipsAbout the shepherd who now singsA song of timeless evenings;For dusk is round him with wide wings,Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.There is not mortal man who knowsFrom whence the, shepherd's song arose:It came a thousand years ago.Once the world's shepherds woke to leadThe folded sheep that they might feedOn green downs where winds blow.One shepherd sang a golden word.A thousand miles away one heard.One sang it swift, one sang it slow.Three skylarks heard, three skylarks toldAll shepherds this same song of goldOn all downs where winds blow.This is the song that shepherds mustSing till the green downlands be dustAnd tide of sheep-drift no more flow:The song three skylarks told againTo all the sheep and shepherd menOn green downs where winds blow.
silhouetted figures
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On hills too harsh for firs to climb,Where eagle dare not hatch her brood,Upon the peak of solitude,With anvils of black granite crudeI forge austerities of rhyme.Such godlike stuff my spirit drinksI make grand odes of tempests there.The steel-winged eagle, if he dareTo cleave these tracts of frozen air,Hearing such music, swoops and sinks.Stark clangours of forgotten wars,Tumults of primal love and hate,Through crags of song reverberate.Held by the Singer of High State,Battalions of the midnight pause.On hills uplift from Space and Time,Upon the peak of Solitude,With stars to give my furnace food,On anvils of black granite crudeI forge austerities of rhyme.
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Light, like a closing flower, covers to earth her herds,Out of the world we only watch for the rise of moon;Darker the twilight glimmers, dulls the warble of birds,Over the silent field travels the night-jar's tune.Here, at my side, so close that even your breath I hear,Face and form that I love, now with the night made one,Pray not for any star! Come not, O moon, for fearLest in thy light we lose our way ere the dream be done.Touch, and clasp, and be close! Kiss, oh kiss, and be warm!What is here, O beloved, so like a sea without sound?Under the swathe at our feet, swifter than wings of storm,Summer speeds on his way: Spring lies dead in the ground.How like a closing flower, clasped by a sleeping bee,Life folds over us now: — and here in the midst love lies.O beloved, O flower of night, no morrow's moon shall we see:Between a dusk and a day we meet, and at dawn Time dies!
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Which of my palaces? Gold one by one,Of all the splendid houses of my throne,This day in grave thought have I over-gone:Those roofs of stars where I have lived aloneGladly with God; those blue-encompassed bowersHushed round with lakes, and guarded with still flowers,Where I have watched a face from eve till morn,Wondering at being born —Then on from morn again till the next eve,Still with strange eyes, unable to believe;And yet, though week and month and year went by.Incredulous of my ensorcelled eye.O had I thus in trance for ever stayed,Still were she there in the reed-girdled isle,And I there still — I who go treading nowEternity, a-hungered mile by mile:Because I pressed one kiss upon her brow, —After a thousand years that seemed an hourOf looking on my flower,After that patient planetary fast,One kiss at last;One kiss — and then strange dust that once was she.Sayest thou, Rose, "What is all this to me?"This would I answer, if it pleaseth thee,Thou Rose and Nightingale so strangely one:That of my palaces, gold one by one,I fell a-thinking, pondering which to-day,The day of the Blessed Saint, Saint Valentine,Which of those many palaces of mine,I, with bowed head and lowly bended knee,Might bring to thee.O which of all my lordly roofs that riseTo kiss the starry skiesMay with great beams make safe that golden head,With all that treasure of hair showered and spread.Careless as though it were not gold at all —Yet in the midnight lighting the black hall;And all that whiteness lying there as thoughIt were but driven snow.Pondering on all these pinnacles and towers,That, as I come with trumpets, call me lord,And crown their battlements with girlhood flowers,I can but think of one. 'Twas not my swordThat won it, nor was it aught I did or dreamed,But O it is a palace worthy thee!For all about it flows the eternal sea,A blue moat guarding an immortal queen;And over it an everlasting crownThat, as the moon comes and the sun goes down,Adds jewel after jewel, gem on gem,To the august appropriate diademOf her, in whom all potencies that areWield sceptres and with quiet hands control,Kind as that fairy wand the evening star,Or the strong angel that we call the soul.Thou splendid girl that seemest the mother of all,Dear Ceres-Aphrodite, with every lureThat draws the bee to honey, with the callOf moth-winged night to sinners, yet as pureAs the white nun that counts the stars for beads;Thou blest Madonna of all broken needs,Thou Melusine, thou sister of sorrowing man,Thou wave-like laughter, thou dear sob in the throat,Thou all-enfolding mercy, and thou songThat gathers up each wild and wandering note,And takes and breaks and heals and breaks the heartWith the omnipotent tenderness of art;And thou Intelligence of rose-leaves madeThat makes that little thing the brain afraid.For thee my Castle of the Spring prepares:On the four winds are sped my couriers,For thee the towered trees are hung with green;Once more for thee, O queen,The banquet hall with ancient tapestryOf woven vines grows fair and still more fair.And ah! how in the minstrel galleryAgain there is the sudden string and stirOf music touching the old instruments,While on the ancient floorThe rushes as of yoreNymphs of the house of spring plait for your feet —Ancestral ornaments.And everywhere a hurrying to and fro,And whispers saying, "She is so sweet — so sweet";O violets, be ye not too late to blow,O daffodils be fleet:For, when she comes, all must be in its place,All ready for her entrance at the door,All gladness and all glory for her face,All flowers for her flower-feet a floor;And, for her sleep at night in that great bedWhere her great locks are spread,O be ye ready, ye young woodland streamsTo sing her back her dreams.