English

In Reply to his Solicitation to Write with him in a Literary Work

Dear architect of fine Chateaux en l'air ,
Worthier to stand for ever, if they could,
Than any built with stone, or yet with wood
For back of royal elephant to bear! —
Oh for my youth again, that I might share,
Much to my own, tho' little to thy good,
With thee, not subject to the jealous mood,
A partnership of literary ware!
But I am bankrupt now, and doom'd henceforth
To drudge, in descant dry, on others' lays,

On the Refusal of the University of Oxford to Subscribe to his Translation of Homer

Could Homer come himself, distress'd and poor,
And tune his harp at Rhedicina's door,
The rich old vixen would exclaim (I fear)
Begone! no tramper gets a farthing here.

The cool of bamboo invades my room;
moonlight from the fields fills the corners of the court;
dew gathers till it falls in drops;
a scattering of stars, now there, now gone
A firefly threading the darkness makes its own light;
birds at rest on the water call to each other;
all these lie within the shadow of the sword —
Powerless I grieve as the clear night passes.

Coming and going, no fixed lodging,
over rivers and seas, wherever wind and mist take me.
Nights I stay in a temple among the peaks,
mornings make for the Mao Lake boat.
Green hills — and as I turn my head,
white birds in front of the sail winging away.
Ten years a traveler in a foreign land —
wordless, I stand lost in thought.

(Song)

I

The curtains now are drawn,
And the spindrift strikes the glass,
Blown up the jagged pass
By the surly salt sou'-west,
And the sneering glare is gone
Behind the yonder crest,

" Cogitavi vias meas"

A cry from the green-grained sticks of the fire
Made me gaze where it seemed to be:
'Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me
On how I had walked when my sun was higher —
My heart in its arrogancy.

" You held not to whatsoever was true,"
Said my own voice talking to me:
" Whatsoever was just you were slack to see;
Kept not things lovely and pure in view,"
Said my own voice talking to me.

" You slighted her that endureth all,"
Said my own voice talking to me;

Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush,
Dead at the foot of a snowberry bush--
Weave him a coffin of rush,
Dig him a grave where the soft mosses grow,
Raise him a tombstone of snow.

Crows crowd croaking overhead,
Hastening to the woods to bed.
Cooing sits the lonely dove,
Calling home her absent love.
With " Kirchup! Kirchup! " 'mong the wheats
Partridge distant partridge greets.

Bats fly by in hood and cowl;
Through the barn-hole pops the owl;
From the hedge, in drowsy hum,
Heedless buzzing beetles hum,
Haunting every bushy place,
Flopping in the labourer's face.

Flowers now sleep within their hoods;
Daisies button into buds;
From soiling dew the buttercup

Dean-bourn, farewell; I never look to see
Dean, or thy warty incivility.
Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams,
And makes them frantic, ev'n to all extremes,
To my content I never should behold,
Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold.
Rocky thou art; and rocky we discover
Thy men; and rocky are thy ways all over.
O men, O manners; now, and ever known
To be a rocky generation!
A people currish, churlish as the seas,
And rude (almost) as rudest savages--
With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when

Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin, not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
The bee awaked — with anger wild
The bee awaked, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
" Oh Mother! I am wounded through —
I die with pain — in sooth I do!
Stung by some little angry thing,
Some serpent on a tiny wing —
A bee it was — for once, I know,
I heard a rustic call it so. "
Thus he spoke, and she the while