"When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, "He was a man who used to notice such things"?"

"Here by the baring bough Raking up leaves, Often I ponder how Springtime deceives,— I, an old woman now, Raking up leaves."

"Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."

"Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might That fashioned forth its loveliness Had other aims than my delight."

"The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore, As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore; Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar."

"Aggressive Fancy working spells Upon a mind o’erwrought."

"Ere systemed suns were globed and lit The slaughters of the race were writ."

"When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away."

"My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading."

"It works unconsciously, as heretofore, Eternal artistries in Circumstance."

"Why doth IT so and so, and ever so, This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?"

"What of the Immanent Will and its designs? It works unconsciously as heretofore, External artistries in circumstance."

"O memory, where is now my youth, Who used to say that life was truth?"

"We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone."

"My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears Which peoples old in tragedy Have left upon the centuried years."

"Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on! Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee."

"A local thing called Christianity."

"A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ’mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands..."

"And feign like truth, for one mad day, That Earth is Paradise?"

"When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?"

"It surely is far sweeter and more wise To water love, than toil to leave anon A name whose glory-gleam will but advise Invidious minds to quench it with their own."

"No man can change the common lot to rare."

"I saw a dead man’s finer part Shining within each faithful heart Of those bereft. Then said I: 'This must be His immortality.'"

"The world-imprinting power of perished Rome."

"Thou should’st have learnt that Not to Mend For Me could mean but Not to Know."

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, Brides are not what they seem; Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; I am thy very dream!"

"As newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind. —We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind, And keen are yet, must not regret To drop behind."

"Time’s central city, Rome."

"That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake."

"Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash of the First, Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst, Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom, and fear, Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here."

"Dullest of dull-hued Days!"

"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race? By Me created? Sad its lot? Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: Such world I fashioned not."

"In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent."

"Still rule those minds on earth At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled: ‘Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?"

"They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined — just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.Young Hodge the Drummer never knew — Fresh from his Wessex home — The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally."

"Whence comes solace? Not from seeing, What is doing, suffering, being; Not from noting Life’s conditions, Not from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream And in gazing at the Gleam Whereby gray things golden seem."

"How fares the Truth now?—Ill? —Do pens but slily further her advance? May one not speed her but in phrase askance?"

"When Lawyers strive to heal a breach, And Parsons practise what they preach."

"All the vast various moils that mean a world alive."

"Is your heart far away, Or with mine beating? When false things are brought low, And swift things have grown slow, Feigning like froth shall go, Faith be for aye."

""Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads; Yet at mothy curfew-tide, And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads, They've a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide."

"Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, True to the wind that kissed ere canker came."

"Love is lovelier The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise."

"For incensed love breathes quick and dies, When famished love a-lingering lies."

"For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one's life were riven."

"I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires."

"Yet saw he something in the lives Of those who'd ceased to live That rounded them with majesty Which living failed to give."

"Those house them best who house for secrecy."

"O, doth a bird deprived of wings Go earth-bound wilfully!"