English

You look in vain for a sign,
For a light in their eyes. No!
Stolid they sit, lulled
By the roar of the train in the tube,
Content with the electric light,
Assured, comfortable, warm.
Despair? . . . .
For a moment, yes:
This is the mass, inert,
Unalarmed, undisturbed;
And we, the spirit that moves,
We leaven the mass,
And it changes;
We sweeten the mass,
Or the world
Would stink in the ether.

As evening slowly spreads his mantle hoar,
No ruder sounds the bounded valley fill,
Than the faint din, from yonder sedgy shore,
Of rushing waters, and the murmuring mill.

How sunk the scene, where cloister'd Leisure mus'd!
Where war-worn Edward paid his awful vow
And, lavish of magnificence, diffus'd
His crowded spires o'er the broad mountain's brow!

The golden fans, that o'er the turrets strown,
Quick-glancing to the sun, wild music made,
Are reft, and every battlement o'ergrown

When peace has come, and I return from France,
I know the places that I'll long to see:
Those hunch-backed hills so full of old romance,
Where first frail Beauty's visions dawned for me,
And April comes, swift, dancing like a girl,
With golden tresses flowing in the breeze,
And where swart, autumn leaves disport and whirl,
In maudlin dance beneath the naked trees.

And I shall see the cottage on the hill,
With all the loveliness of summer days,
Whose memories to me are haunted still

The Summer Spirit has brought back again
Her bright-hued butterflies and humming bees,
While blossoms fed with sun and silver rain

Lift up their buoyanTheads beneath the trees
Whose boughs are swaying in the scented wind,
And sudden sunshine laps the laughing leas

In lucent glory by dusk leafage lined
Of woodland, where blithe bird songs thrill the air,
Dear red-lipped daisies in the grass enshrined.

How glad we are to see you gleaming there!
June's amorous breaths, flower fragrant round you flow. …

Your countenance is written in my soul,
and whatever I may wish to write of you;
you yourself wrote it; I read it
in such privacy that I hide even from you.

In this condition I am and always will remain;
for though I cannot contain all that I see in you,
whatever I do not comprehend of your great worth, I believe,
since my faith takes it for granted.

I was born only to love you;
my soul has cut you to its measure;
I want you as a garment for my soul.

Whatever I own I confess I owe to you;

When the rose is brightest,
Its bloom will soonest die;
When burns the meteor brightest,
'T will vanish from the sky.
If Death but wait until delight
O'errun the heart like wine,
And break the cup with brimming quite,
I die—for thou hast poured to-night
The last drop into mine.

From Calatrava as I took my way
At holy Mary's shrine to kneel and pray,
And sleep upon my eyelids heavy lay,
There where the ground was very rough and wild,
I lost my path and met a peasant child:
From Finojosa, with the herds around her,
There in the fields I found her.

Upon a meadow green with tender grass,
With other rustic cowherds, lad and lass,
So sweet a thing to see I watched her pass:
My eyes could scarce believe her what they found her,
There with the herds around her.

Doesn't he realize
that I am not
like the swaying kelp
in the surf,
where the seaweed gatherer
can come as often as he wants.

Some poor man in need
To bless and to feed,
I bring at its worth,
This day of my birth,
A book,—from my youth I must own.
But Who in His power
Gave bud and gave flower,
To bread can transform
In want's winter-storm
Each leaf that my Springtime has grown.

Lollay, lollay, little child, why wepestou so sore?
Nedes mostou wepe--it was iyarked thee yore
Ever to lib in sorow, and sich and mourne evere,
As thine eldren did er this, whil hi alives were.
Lollay, lollay, little child, child, lollay, lullow,
Into uncuth world icommen so ertou.

Bestes, and thos foules, the fisses in the flode,
And euch shef alives, imaked of bone and blode,
Whan hi commeth to the world, hi doth hamsilf sum gode,
All bot the wrech brol that is of Adames blode.
Lollay, lollay, little child, to car ertou bemette;