running

One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning-hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: "Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!"

Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red

A MONTH, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear Mother went away,---
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is the happy day.

O blessed tidings! thought of joy!
The eldest heard with steady glee;
Silent he stood; then laughed amain,---
And shouted, ' Mother, come to me!'

Louder and louder did he shout,
With witless hope to bring her near;
'Nay, patience! patience, little boy!
Your tender mother cannot hear.'

I told of hills, and far-off town,
And long, long vale to travel through;---

The red sun on the lonely lands
   Gazed, under clouds of rose,
As one who under knitted hands
   Takes one last look and goes.

Then Pain, with her white sister Fear,
   Crept nearer to my bed:
"The sands are running; dost thou hear
   Thy sobbing heart?" she said.

There came a rider to the gate,
   And stern and clear spake he:
"For meat or drink thou must not wait,
   But rise and ride with me."

I waited not for meat or drink,
   Or kiss, or farewell kind --

My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,
Disturbs the velvet of the dark night's mantle,
By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,
Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood --
And run the streams of love, run, full of you alone,
And in the dark, your eyes shine like the precious stones,
And smile to me, and hear I the voice:
My friend, my sweetest friend... I love... I'm yours... I'm yours!

How much better it seems now
than when it is finally done–
the unforgettable first line,
the cunning way the stanzas run.

The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive
are barely audible at first,
an appetite not yet acknowledged
like the inkling of a thirst.

While gradually the form appears
as each line is coaxed aloud–
the architecture of a room
seen from the middle of a crowd.

The music that of common speech
but slanted so that each detail
sounds unexpected as a sharp

Peace? and to all the world? sure, One
And He the Prince of Peace, hath none.
He travels to be born, and then
Is born to travel more again.
Poor Galilee! thou canst not be
The place for His nativity.
His restless mother's called away,
And not delivered till she pay.
A tax? 'tis so still! we can see
The church thrive in her misery;
And like her Head at Bethlem, rise
When she, oppressed with troubles, lies.
Rise? should all fall, we cannot be
In more extremities than He.

ROLL forth, my song, like the rushing river,
   That sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver
   My soul of thee!

Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening
   Amid the last homes of youth and eld,
That once there was one whose veins ran lightning
   No eye beheld.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,
   How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,
No star of all heaven sends to light our
   Path to the tomb.

Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.

Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.

And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.

And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,

By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep,
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep,
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun
Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, "cocky" on Mylora Run.
Jimmy loved the super's daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath.
Long and earnestly he sought her, but he feared her stern papa;
And Amelia loved him truly -- but the course of love, if true,
Never yet ran smooth or duly, as I think it ought to do.

Early one day, the Muse, when eagerly bent on adornment,
Follow'd a swift-running streamlet, the quietest nook by it seeking.
Quickly and noisily flowing, the changeful surface distorted
Ever her moving form; the goddess departed in anger.
Yet the stream call'd mockingly after her, saying: "What, truly!
Wilt thou not view, then, the truth, in my mirror so clearly depicted?"
But she already was far away, on the brink of the ocean,
In her figure rejoicing, and duly arranging her garland.