• With fraud the church, the law, the camp are rife,
• Nothing but wickedness! O weary life!
• I must console me with my neighbour's wife

     

• O woodman, spare that block,
• O gash not anyhow;
• It took ten days by clock,
• I'd fain protect it now.
• Chorus, wild laughter from Dalziel's workshop

   

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The river-reaches wind,
• The whispering trees accept the breeze,
• The ripple's cool and kind:
• With love low-whispered 'twixt the shores,
• With rippling laughters gay,
• With white arms bared to ply the oars,
• On last year's first of May.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• 10 The river's brimmed with rain,
• Through close-met banks and parted banks
• Now near, now far again:
• With parting tears caressed to smiles,
• With meeting promised soon,
• With every sweet vow that beguiles,
• On last year's first of June.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The river's flecked with foam,
• 'Neath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
• 20 And lost winds wild for home:
• With infant wailings at the breast,
• With homeless steps astray,
• With wanderings shuddering tow'rds one rest,
• On this year's first of May.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The summer river flows
• With doubled flight of moons by night
• And lilies' deep repose:
• With lo! beneath the moon's white stare
• 30 A white face not the moon,
• With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
• On this year's first of June.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• A troth was given and riven,
• From heart's trust grew one life to two,
• Two lost lives cry to Heaven:
• With banks spread calm beneath the sky,
• With meadows newly mowed,
• The harvest paths of glad July,
• 40 The sweet school-children's road.

Kelmscott, July 1871    

• Like labour-laden moon-clouds faint to flee
• From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
• Like multiform circumfluence manifold
• Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
• Of fire dumb-tongued and inarticulate sea,—
• Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
• Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
• Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

• Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
• 10 One Power than flow of stream or flight of dove
• Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
• Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
• Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
• Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is love?

   

• Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
• On this June day; and hand that clings in hand;—
• Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fanned:—
• An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
• Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
• Fresh hourly wonder o'er the summer land
• Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spanned
• With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—

• Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
• 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
• Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree
• Together on his heart for ever true,
• As the white-foaming firmamental blue
• Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.

   

• Not I myself know all my love for thee:
• How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
• To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
• Shall birth, and death, and all dark voids that be
• As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
• Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
• And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
• And ultimate outpost of eternity?

• Lo! what am I to Love, the Lord of all?
• 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
• One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
• Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
• And veriest touch of powers primordial
• That any hour-girt life may understand.

   

• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,—
• With still tears showering and averted face,
• Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
• And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
• I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
• Against all ills the fortified strong place
• And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
• 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
• All shafts of shelterless, tumultuous day.
• Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
• And as soft waters warble to the moon,
• Our answering kisses chime one roundelay.

   

• The day is dark and the night
• To him that would search their heart;
• No lips of cloud that will part
• Nor morning song in the light:
• Only, gazing alone,
• To him wild shadows are shown,
• Deep under deep unknown
• And height above unknown height.
• Still we say as we go,—
• 10 “Strange to think by the way,
• Whatever there is to know,
• That shall we know one day.”

• The Past is over and fled;
• Named new, we name it the old;
• Thereof some tale hath been told,
• But no word comes from the dead.
page: 147  
• Whether at all they be,
• Or whether as bond or free,
• Or whether they too were we,
• 20Or by what spell they have sped.
• Still we say as we go,—
• “Strange to think by the way,
• Whatever there is to know,
• That shall we know one day.”

• What of the heart of hate
• That beats in thy breast, O Time?—
• Red strife from the furthest prime,
• And anguish of fierce debate;
• War that shatters her slain,
• 30 And peace that grinds them as grain,
• And eyes fixed ever in vain
• On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
• Still we say as we go,—
• “Strange to think by the way,
• Whatever there is to know,
• That shall we know one day.”

• What of the heart of love
• That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?—
• Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
• 40Of fangs that mock them above;
• Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
• Thy hope that a breath dispels,
• Thy bitter forlorn farewells
• And the empty echoes thereof.
• Still we say as we go,—
• “Strange to think by the way,
• Whatever there is to know,
• That shall we know one day.”

• The sky leans dumb on the sea,
• 50 Aweary with all its wings;
• And oh! the song the sea sings
• Is dark everlastingly.
page: 148  
• Our past is clean forgot,
• Our present is and is not,
• Our future's a sealed seedplot,
• And what betwixt them are we?—
• Atoms that nought can sever
• “I From one world-circling will,—
• To throb at its heart for ever,
• 60 Yet never to know it still.

9th August 1871      

• There's a Scotch correspondent named Scott
• Thinks a penny for postage a lot;
• Books, verses, and letters
• Too good for his betters
• Cannot screw out an answer from Scott.

     

• Enter Skald, moored in a punt,
• And Jacks and Tenches exeunt.

     

• Oh, how the family affections combat
• Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
• My burning soul; neither from owl nor from bat
• Can peace be to me now I've lost my Wombat.

     

• There's that foolish old Scotchman called Scott,
• Who thinks he has hair, but has not.

   

• There's a foolish old Scotchman called Scotus,
• Most justly a Pictor Ignotus,
• For what he best knew
• He never would do,
• This stubborn donkey called Scotus.

 

• There's a painter his friends calls G------,
• Whose pictures the public ne'er see;
• If you want to know why,
• It's because he's so shy
• To show how funny they be.

   

• There is a poor sneak called Rossetti,
• As a painter with many kicks met he—
• With more as a man—
• But sometimes he ran,
• And that saved the rump of Rossetti.

   

• There's a solid fat German called Huffer,
• Who at anything funny's a duffer:
• To proclaim Schopenhauer
• From the top of a tower
• Will be the last effort of Huffer.

   

• There's the Irishman Arthur O'Shaughnessy,
• On the checkboard of poets a pawn is he:
• Though bishop or king
• Would be rather the thing
• To the fancy of Arthur O'Shaughnessy.