Short Poems

Love - what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life - what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Light as the linnet on my way I start,
For all my pack I bear a chartered heart.
Forth on the world without a guide or chart,
Content to know, through all man's varying fates,
The eternal woman by the wayside waits.

I love to be warm by the red fireside,
I love to be wet with rain:
I love to be welcome at lamplit doors,
And leave the doors again.

I know not how, but as I count
The beads of former years,
Old laughter catches in my throat
With the very feel of tears.

Hail, guest, and enter freely! All you see
Is, for your momentary visit, yours; and we
Who welcome you are but the guests of God,
And know not our departure.

Fair Isle at Sea - thy lovely name
Soft in my ear like music came.
That sea I loved, and once or twice
I touched at isles of Paradise.

Early in the morning I hear on your piano
You (at least, I guess it's you) proceed to learn to play.
Mostly little minds should take and tackle their piano
While the birds are singing in the morning of the day.

Look round: You see a little supper room;
But from my window, lo! great Caesar's tomb!
And the great dead themselves, with jovial breath
Bid you be merry and remember death.

Away with funeral music - set
The pipe to powerful lips -
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.

At last she comes, O never more
In this dear patience of my pain
To leave me lonely as before,
Or leave my soul alone again.