Testament

Oh, let it be a night of lyric rain
And singing breezes, when my bell is tolled.
I have so loved the rain that I would hold
Last in my ears its friendly, dim refraln.
I shall lie cool and quiet, who have lain
Fevered, and watched the book of day unfold.
Death will not see me flinch; the heart is bold
That pain has made incapable of pain.

Kinder the busy worms than ever love;
It will be peace to lie there, empty-eyed,
My bed made secret by the leveling showers,
My breast replenishing the weeds above.


Tess

The free fair life that has never been mine, the glory that might have been,
If I were what you seem to be and what I may not be !
I know I walk upon the earth, but a dreadful wall between
My spirit and your spirit lies, your joy and my misery.

The angels that lie watching us, the little human play,
What deem they of the laughter and the tears that flow apart ?
When a word of man is a woman's doom do they turn and wonder and say,
'Ah ! Why has God made love so great that love must burst her heart ?'


Tender Confessions

When I think of how life used to be,
how I always hid in the shadows,
letting it obscure my existence.
I look at everything you have given me:
love and hope, not just for us,
but for the future as well.
I feel like I’m dancing in the clouds
I must confess, each day I wake
I fear that this has all been but a dream;
then I realize you’re still with me.
I know I have been truly blessed
for everything you have given me,
for the love and tenderness you show,
that I have not been left behind.


Tear It Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound


Te Deum Laudamus

I will praise God alway for each new year,
Knowing that it shall be most worthy of
His kindness and His pity and His love.
I will wait patient, till, from sphere to sphere,
Across large times and spaces, ringeth clear

The voice of Him who sitteth high above,
Saying, “Behold! thou hast had pain enough;
Come; for thy Love is waiting for thee here!”
I know that it must happen as God saith.
I know it well. Yet, also, I know well


That where birds sing and yellow wild-flowers dwell,


Tarrant Moss

I closed and drew for my love's sake
That now is false to me,
And I slew the Reiver of Tarrant Moss
And set Dumeny free.

They have gone down, they have gone down,
They are standing all arow -
Twenty knights in the peat-water,
That never struck a blow!

Their armour shall not dull nor rust,
Their flesh shall not decay,
For Tarrant Moss holds them in trust,
Until the Judgment Day.

Their soul went from them in their youth,
Ah God, that mine had gone,
Whenas I leaned on my love's truth


Tamerton Church-Tower, Or, First Love

I.
We left the Church at Tamerton
In gloomy western air;
To greet the day we gallop'd on,
A merry-minded pair.
The hazy East hot noon did bode;
Our horses sniff'd the dawn;
We made ten Cornish miles of road
Before the dew was gone.
We clomb the hill where Lanson's Keep
Fronts Dartmoor's distant ridge;
Thence trotted South; walk'd down the steep
That slants to Gresson Bridge;
And paused awhile, where Tamar waits,
In many a shining coil,
And teeming Devon separates
From Cornwall's sorry soil.


Swan Song

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man’s lure;
And love grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.


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