Short Poems

The people people work with best
Are often very queer
The people people own by birth
Quite shock your first idea;
The people people choose for friends
Your common sense appall,
But the people people marry
Are the queerest folks of all.

L OURDES heals the body's ills through the ill of the soul, Superstition;
But, when the body is healed, where is the Lourdes for the soul?

When Parliament-people petition their friends,
The state of the poll on the canvass depends;
But here we submit to a diff'rent control,
The state of the canvass depends on the pole!

I HAVE sought beauty through the dust of strife,
I have sought meaning for the ancient ache,
And music in the grinding wheels of life;
Long have I sought, and little found as yet
Beyond this truth: that Love alone can make
Earth beautiful, and life without regret!

As through the fields we walk, a thread
Of gossamer flits o'er the lea,
An airy phantom, fairy-bred,
And knits a band from thee to me.
I take it for a warning sign,
A sign how love too oft doth fare.
O hopes in Hope's wide realms that shine,
From vapour spun, dispersed by air!

From out the keen distress that circled me,
Have I, sweet child, preserved myself for thee;
That I mine eyes and heart may feed and bless
With thine angelic happiness,
With this sweet innocence, this morning-gleam,
This yet untroubled, heav'n-descended stream.

Those islands far away are mine,
Beyond the cloudy strip;
And something beautiful, besides:—
I think it is a Ship.

It is now eight o'clock;
I will go and see
If my swallows are on their nest.
Yes! there they are,
Side by side,
Both looking down into the garden.

Venus,
Almost like another moon,
Lost to us at Alfoxden
Long before
She goes down the large white sea.

The critic who, with nice discernment, knows
What to his country and his friends he owes;
How various nature warms the human breast,
To love the parent, brother, friend, or guest.
What the great functions of our judges are,
Of senators, and generals sent to war:
He can distinguish with unerring art
The strokes peculiar to each different part.