English

Who am I my God & my Lord
& what is my house in thy eye
Thou hast brought me here of thy sovereign accord
& cloathed me in majesty

Yet this was a trifling thing unto thee
Thou hast spoke of thy servant whose house is to last
Like a man of estate & of noble degree
O God though in lowness his lot hath been cast

What can David speak more unto thee
For the honour of thy servant—or need
For thou knowest thy servant was of humble degree
& exaltest him highly indeed

How can he turn religious and adore
That God, he so devoutly moc'd before?
I will the depths of Providence reveal;
Th' Almighty's methods will I not conceal.
Yet why should I suggest what your own heart,
Where it not vain, might, better farr, impart?
On th' wicked's head this heavy fate shall come,
And this shall be from God th' Oppressor's doom:
His sons tho' more and lovelyer they are
Than their decrepit father's silver hayr,
Strong as the sons of Anak, bright and brave,
Shall shrowd theyr pride in an untimely Grave,

Of a thousand things that the Year snowed under—
The busy Old Year who has gone away—
How many will rise in the Spring, I wonder,
Brought to life by the sun of May?
Will the rose-tree branches, so wholly hidden
That never a rose-tree seems to be,
At the sweet Spring's call come forth unbidden,
And bud in beauty, and bloom for me?

Will the fair, green Earth, whose throbbing bosom
Is hid like a maid's in her gown at night,
Wake out of her sleep, and with blade and blossom
Gem her garments to please my sight?

this trip
likely the one I'll die on
dandelions gone to fuzz.

I tell you what, you wanderers, who drift from town to town;
Don't look into a good girl's eyes, until you've settled down.
It's hard to go away alone and leave old chums behind—
It's hard to travel steerage when your tastes are more refined—
To reach a place when times are bad, and to be stranded there,
No money in your pocket nor a decent rag to wear.
But to be forced from that fond clasp, from that last clinging kiss—
By poverty! There is on earth no harder thing than this.

Bar the gates of Mammon Castle! See that troops are posted there!
I have seen the crimson banner of the children of Despair!
Here they come!
O here they come!
And their eyes are cowed no longer and their bloodless lips are dumb.
Here they come!

Let the monarchs make a treaty, for the pregnant hours declare
War against the social system by the Army of Despair!
Here it comes!
O here it comes!
Now defiant hymns are growling like the “roll of muffled drums”.
Here it comes!

“Was I at Eureka?” His figure was drawn to a youthful height,
And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;
With pleasure they lighted and glistened, though the digger was grizzled and old,
And we gathered about him and listened while the tale of Eureka he told.

“Ah, those were the days,” said the digger; “'twas a glorious life that we led,
When fortunes were dug up and lost in a day in the whirl of the years that are dead.
But there's many a veteran now in the land—old knights of the pick and the spade,

I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task
So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain;
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye,
The plover's call, the curlew's cry,
Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass

Heaven is not any place. And hell with ardent arches
May be discerned amid the feathery-foliaged larches
Gleaming—Our own hearts make
The golden towers of heaven, the ramparts high and solemn
Relieved by marble white, and wealth of jewelled column:—
Our own souls' yearnings fan the fiery lake.

From our own thought the waves take life and exultation;
The earth moves nearer heaven with each new generation;
Heaven is no land remote,
Heaven is our old green earth. We can, if we will give it,

The thoughts that haunt the poet like a dream,
Strange sweet ghost-shapes that through his fancy gleam,
Will one day haunt all hearts as well.
He fills the wide world with his love of flowers,
And with his love of summer sunlit hours,
And with his hate of hell.

The woman whom he loves and crowns shall stand
One day imperial over every land.
The passionate eyes that haunt his sleep
Shall one day flash upon the world, and make
(Not now the poet's, nay) the world's heart ache,
And make the world's eyes weep.