The moon rides high in a starry sky,
And, through the midnight gloom,
A faery scene of woodland green
Her silver rays illume.
Dark mountains show a ridge of snow
Against the deep blue sky,
And a winding stream with sparkling gleam
Flows merrily murmuring by.
Not a sound is heard, save a bough when stirred
By the night-wind's moaning sigh,
Or, piercing and shrill, echoed back by the hill,
A curlew's mournful cry.
And twinkling bright in the shadowy night
A lonely taper shines,
And seated there is a wanton fair

What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.

On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."

So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And his grand head, snowed with the years,
Unto the beat of the rain was bare;
And, oh, there was grief in his frozen stare,
And his cheeks were stung with tears!

"The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently finds his way
into the ranks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police." -- Extract.

Hark to the ewe that bore him:
"What has muddied the strain?
Never his brothers before him
Showed the hint of a stain."
Hark to the tups and wethers;
Hark to the old gray ram:
"We're all of us white, but he's black as night,
And he'll never be worth a damn."

For George Anthell

Between them is the land of broken colors,
the land that makes a mock of him
with miles.
He rides, he rides,
he passes through the flat
chrome wheatfields
cut by the plough of the river makers.

The hills are aslant,
the clay torsos, the hills,
the clay has a red wound,
it gapes.
The white roots cry,
there is a mute susurrus in the dark:
poppies, poppies are you not
their pain?

With hoof on flint and flint
the black horse
rides: black wind, black
against fire.

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness,
I search for you in vain;
You are the only growing thing
Can take away my pain.

When I was young, this bitter herb
Grew wild on every hill;
I should have plucked a store of it,
And kept it by me still.

I hunt through all the meadows
Where once I wandered free,
But the rare herb, Forgetfulness,
It hides away from me.

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness,
Where is your drowsy breath?
Oh, can it be your seed has blown
Far as the Vales of Death?

From east and south the holy clan
Of Bishops gathered to a man;
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican,
In flocking crowds they came.
Among them was a Bishop, who
Had lately been appointed to
The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo,
And PETER was his name.

His people - twenty-three in sum -
They played the eloquent tum-tum,
And lived on scalps served up, in rum -
The only sauce they knew.
When first good BISHOP PETER came
(For PETER was that Bishop's name),
To humour them, he did the same
As they of Rum-ti-Foo.

When Love was born of heavenly line,
What dire intrigues disturbed Cythera's joy!
Till Venus cried, 'A mother's heart is mine;
None but myself shall nurse my boy,'

But, infant as he was, the child
In that divine embrace enchanted lay;
And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,
Forgot the beverage--and pined away.

'And must my offspring languish in my sight?'
(Alive to all a mother's pain,
The Queen of Beauty thus her court addressed)
'No: Let the most discreet of all my train
Receive him to her breast:

Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?

And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme--
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?

It is not learning, grace nor gear,
Nor easy meat and drink,
But bitter pinch of pain and fear
That makes creation think.


When in this world's unpleasing youth
Our godlike race began,
The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,

Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
And seek you again through the world’s far ends,
You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
(How could I forget having loved you so?),
In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I’ll stand
And hold you fiercely be either hand,

Kiss me and comfort my heart
Maiden honest and fine.
I am the pilgrim boy
Lame, but hunting the shrine;

Fleeing away from the sweets,
Seeking the dust and rain,
Sworn to the staff and road,
Scorning pleasure and pain;

Nevertheless my mouth
Would rest like a bird an hour
And find in your curls a nest
And find in your breast a bower:

Nevertheless my eyes
Would lose themselves in your own,
Rivers that seek the sea,
Angels before the throne:

Kiss me and comfort my heart,