Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile

—Who loves the rain
—And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
—Him will I follow through the storm;
—And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
—Who loves the rain,
—And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes.

He Praises His Wife When She Has Left Him

White hands of languorous grace,
Fair feet of stately pace
And snowy-shining knees—
My love was made of these.

Stars glimmered in her hair,
Slim was she, satin-fair;
The straight line of her brows
Shadowed her cheek's fresh rose.

What words can match her ways,
That beauty past all praise,
That courteous, stately air,
Winsome and shy and fair.

To have known all this and be
Tortured with memory—
Curse on this waking breath—
Makes me in love with death.

Better to sleep than see

Out of the Inner Shell of a Certain Landscape

Where shall this lust open its mouth?
A big sea turtle is asleep like a mountain
and near the Paleozoic sea
the shell of a giant clam weighing about four tons in thickness is surveying it all.
What slow dark sunrays!
From behind the island at each cape misty with sprays
a mysterious hospital ship form emerges
and it is, you see, dragging the hawser of its sunken anchor.
Listen! my love
how long are we going to sit here, side by side on these sad rocks here
the sun is boundlessly distant

Love, Whose Month Was Ever May

When with May the air is sweet,
When the forest fair is clad,
All that have a love to meet
Pair in pleasure, lass and lad.
Merrily arm in arm they go,
For the time will have it so.
Love and love, when linked together,
Love goes with to keep them gay:
All the three, this sunshine weather,
They are making holiday.
Sorrow cannot come between
Hearts where Love and May are seen.
Where to love sweet love is plighted,
Constant and with all the soul,
And the pair are so united

To My Inconstant Mistress

When thou, poor Excommunicate
From all the joys of Love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy!

A fairer hand than thine shall cure
That heart which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul a soul more pure
Than thine shall by Love's hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crown'd.

Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain

Night

When the time comes for me to die,
—To-morrow, or some other day,
If God should bid me make reply,
—“What would'st thou?” I shall say,

O God, Thy world was great and fair;
—Yet give me to forget it clean!
Vex me no more with things that were,
—And things that might have been.

I loved, I toiled, throve ill or well,
——Lived certain years and murmured not.
Now grant me in that land to dwell
—Where all things are forgot.

For others, Lord, Thy purging fires,
—The loves reknit, the crown, the palm.

Love's Rebel

When summer took in hand the winter to assail,
With force of might and virtue great his stormy blasts to quail,
And when he clothed fair the earth about with green,
And every tree new garmented, that pleasure was to seen,
Mine heart 'gan new revive, and changed blood did stur
Me to withdraw my winter woe, that kept within the door.
"Abroad!' quod my desire; "assay to set thy foot,
Where thou shalt find the savour sweet; for sprung is every root.
And to thy health, if thou were sick in any case,

The World's May-Queen

When Spring comes back to England
—And crowns her brows with May,
Round the merry moonlit world
—She goes the greenwood way:
She throws a rose to Italy,
—A fleur-de-lys to France;
But round her regal morris-ring
—The seas of England dance.

When Spring comes back to England
—And dons her robe of green,
There's many a nation garlanded
—But England is the Queen;
She's Queen, she's Queen of all the world
—Beneath the laughing sky,
For the nations go a-Maying
—When they hear the New Year cry—

The Seaman's Happy Return

When Sol did cast no light,
being darken'd over,
And the dark time of night
did the skies cover,
Running a river by
There were ships sailing,
A maid most fair I spy'd,
crying and wailing.

Unto this maid I stept,
asking what griev'd her,
She answer'd me and wept,
fates had deceiv'd her:
My love is prest, quoth she,
to cross the ocean,
Proud waves to make the ship
ever in motion.

We lov'd seven years and more,
both being sure,
But I am left on shore,
grief to endure.

End of Another Home Holiday

When shall I see the half-moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?
Why is it, the long, slow stroke of the midnight bell
(Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on my heart with a heavy reproach?

The moon-mist is over the village, out of the mist speaks the bell,
And all the little roofs of the village bow low, pitiful, beseeching, resigned.
— Speak, you my home! what is it I don't do well?

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