Enfors we us with all our might
To love Seint George, our Lady knight.

Worship of virtu is the mede,
And seweth him ay of right:
To worship George then have we nede,
Which is our soverein Lady's knight.

He keped the mad from dragon's dred,
And fraid all France and put to flight.
At Agincourt — the crownecle ye red —
The French him se formest in fight.

In his virtu he wol us lede
Againis the Fend, the ful wight,
And with his banner us oversprede,
If we him love with all oure might.

A woman's looks
Are barbed hooks,
That catch by art
The strongest heart,
When yet they spend no breath.
But let them speak,
And sighing break
Forth into tears,
Their words are spears
That wound our souls to death.

The rarest wit
Is made forget,
And like a child
Is oft beguiled
With Love's sweet-seeming bait.
Love with his rod
So like a god
Commands the mind
We cannot find,
Fair shows hide foul deceit.

Time, that all things
In order brings,
Hath taught me now
To be more slow

Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

THE WOMAN I am
Hides deep in me
Beneath the woman
I seem to be.

She hides away
From the stranger's eye —
She is not known
To the passers-by.

She goes her way,
The woman I seem,
But the woman I am
Withdraws to dream!

The woman I seem
Goes carelessly —
When love goes by
Does not seem to see.

But the woman I am
Knows sudden fear . . .
And hides more deeply
When love draws near!

For love might look closely
Perhaps . . . and see
Her beneath the woman
I seem to be!

Within the gentle heart Love shelters him
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in nature's scheme,
Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.
For with the sun, at once,
So sprang the light immediately; nor was
Its birth before the sun's.
And Love hath his effect in gentleness
Of very self; even as
Within the middle fire the heat's excess.

The fire of Love comes to the gentle heart
Like as its virtue to a precious stone;
To which no star its influence can impart

With joy all relics of the past I hail;
The heath-bell, lingering in our cultured moor,
Or the dull sound of the slip-shouldered flail,
Still busy on the poor man's threshing floor:
I love this unshorn hedgerow, which survives
Its stunted neighbors, in this farming age:
The thatch and houseleek, where old Alice lives
With her old herbal, trusting every page;
I love the spinning wheel, which hums far down
In yon lone valley, though, from day to day,
The boom of Science shakes it from the town.
Ah! sweet old world! thou speedest fast away!

With echoing step the worshippers
Departed one by one;
The organ's pealing voice was stilled,
The vesper hymn was done;
The shadows fell from roof and arch,
Dim was the incensed air,
One lamp alone with trembling ray,
Told of the Presence there!

In the dark church she knelt alone;
Her tears were falling fast;
" Help, Lord, " she cried, " the shades of death
Upon my soul are cast!
Have I not shunned the path of sin
And chosen the better part? "
What voice came through the sacred air?
" My child, give me thy heart!

THE winter is past,
And the summer's come at last
And the blackbirds sing in every tree;
The hearts of these are glad
But my poor heart is sad,
Since my true love is absent from me.

The rose upon the briar
By the water running clear
Gives joy to the linnet and the bee;
Their little hearts are blest
But mine is not at rest,
While my true love is absent from me.

A livery I'll wear
And I'll comb out my hair,
And in velvet so green I'll appear,
And straight I will repair
To the Curragh of Kildare

Why do we fear words?
They can be rose-petal hands,
Cool, fragrant hands stroking our faces,
And sometimes cups of refreshing drink
Sipped in summer by thirsty lips.

Why do we fear words?
Some words are secret bells, the echoes
of their tone announce the start of a magic
And abundant time
Steeped in feeling and life,
So why should we fear words?

We took to silence
We did not want our secrets to pass our lips
We thought that words amassed an unseen monster
Pent up inside the letters, hiding from the ear of time

" WHOM the gods love die young; " — if gods ye be,
Then generously might ye have spared to us
One from your vast unnumbered overplus,
One youth we loved as tenderly as ye.