English

'Mid Cambrian heights around Dolgelly vale,
What time we scaled great Cader's rugged pile,
Or loitered idly where still meadows smile
Beside the Mawddach-stream, or far Cynfael—
Nor tome, nor rhythmic page, nor pastoral tale,
Our summer-sated senses would beguile;
Or lull our ears to melody, the while
The voiceful rill ran lilting down the dale.
In London town once more—behold, once more
The old delight returns! 'Mid heights how vast,
In Milton's verse, through what dim paths we wind;

A man unknown this volume gave,
So long since, to his unknown friend,
Ages ago, their lives had end,
And each in some obscurest grave
Lies mixt with earth: none now would care
To ask or who or what they were.
But, though these two are underground,
Their book is here, all safe and sound;
And he who wrote it (yea, and more
Than a whole hundred years before)
He, the trim courtier, old Carew,
And all the loves he feign'd or knew,
Have won from Aphrodite's eye
Some show of immortality.

Through the Autumn afternoon — I sat before the fire in the Library — and read — almost a little wildly.
I wanted to drug myself with books — drown my thoughts in a great violet sea of Oblivion.
I read about Youth — how the Young and the Strong had gone forth into battle — with banners of golden and blue and crimson.
Of the sunshine that turned their processions into a river of colour — and the songs that — mellow and sweet — rose in their round throats —

HALF-HIDDEN

Your blinding beauty half conceals
Your spirit, as its radiance hides a star;
And only dimly, partially reveals
How bright and radiant inwardly you are.

W ITCHERY

Thy lips bewitch the waves of light,
And make a red rose of a white,
And silent tides of air transform
Into a surgent music-storm.

Thunder AND L IGHTNING

God sowed the lightning, and there grew a soul.
That soul was thou.

You were stay'd in heart on heaven,
I by none but you forgiven, —
You unto your Light are taken,
I of all, in you, forsaken.

Where the night is never broken,
Where for long no speech hath spoken,
There the ears no longer hearken,
There the eyeballs wane and darken.

Yet at hours my soul, so bounded
By that gloom like blood surrounded —
Sees an ancient daylight burning —
Hears departed feet returning.

Oft as my lady sang for me
That song of the lost one that sleeps by the sea,
Of the grave and the rock and the cypress-tree,
Strange was the pleasure that over me stole,
For 't was made of old sadness that lives in my soul.

So still grew my heart at each tender word,
That the pulse in my bosom scarcely stirred,
And I hardly breathed, but only heard:
Where was I? — not in the world of men,
Until she awoke me with silence again.

Like the smell of the vine, when it early bloom

Slowly tread, and gently bear
One that comes across the wave,
From the oppression of his care,
To the freedom of the grave;

From the merciless disease,
Wearing body, wasting brain,
To the rest beneath the trees, —
The forgetting of all pain;

From the delicate eye and ear,
To the rest that shall not see;
To the sleep that shall not hear,
Nor feel the world's vulgarity.

Bear him, in his leaden shroud,
In his pall of foreign oak,
To the uncomplaining crowd,

My heart's whole love in thy white hand I lay,
Irrevocably, as befits the deed,
Undoubtingly, for surely Love decreed
Complete surrender, and I must obey.
Sweet Lady, do not throw the love away;
There may be roses in a wrinkled seed;
And Pan drew music from a broken reed
Till all the world danced round to hear him play.

Imprisoned in my passion's thorny fruit
A million crimson roses crumpled lie;
And though my melancholy heart be mute,
Touch it, and lyric voices will reply.
Make of the hollow reed a magic lute,

I.

When all her brothers in the house
Were lying asleep, my love
Ran before me under the bend of boughs
Till we looked down from above
On the long loch,
On the brown loch,
On the lone loch of Killary!

II.

Together we ran down the copse
And stood in the rain as close
As the birds that sleep in the soft tops
Of the tree that comes and goes
When the morn moon,
When the young moon,
When the morn moon is on Killary!

III.

In tremblings of the water chill

O, the proud purr of it,
Whiz of it, whir of it!
O, the fierce might of it,
Flare of it, flight of it,
Spin of it, speed of it,
Grip of it, greed of it!
O, the wild will of it,
Throb of it, thrill of it,
Vim of it, verve of it,
Swoop of it, swerve of it!
Like a great dragon-fly over the blue,
So it flared, so it flashed, so it flickered and flew.

Nay, but the Hand of it,
Taking command of it;