With such compelling cause to grieveAs daily vexes household peace,And chains regret to his decease,How dare we keep our Christmas-eve; Which brings no more a welcome guestTo enrich the threshold of the nightWith shower’d largess of delightIn dance and song and game and jest? Yet go, and while the holly boughsEntwine the cold baptismal font,Make […]

The time draws near the birth of Christ:The moon is hid; the night is still;The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round,From far and near, on mead and moor,Swell out and fail, as if a doorWere shut between me and the sound: Each voice four […]

I envy not in any moodsThe captive void of noble rage,The linnet born within the cage,That never knew the summer woods: I envy not the beast that takesHis license in the field of time,Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,To whom a conscience never wakes; Nor, what may count itself as blest,The heart that never plighted […]

Still onward winds the dreary way;I with it; for I long to proveNo lapse of moons can canker Love,Whatever fickle tongues may say. And if that eye which watches guiltAnd goodness, and hath power to seeWithin the green the moulder’d tree,And towers fall’n as soon as built— Oh, if indeed that eye foreseeOr see (in […]

I know that this was Life,—the trackWhereon with equal feet we fared;And then, as now, the day preparedThe daily burden for the back. But this it was that made me moveAs light as carrier-birds in air;I loved the weight I had to bear,Because it needed help of Love: Nor could I weary, heart or limb,When […]

And was the day of my delightAs pure and perfect as I say?The very source and fount of DayIs dash’d with wandering isles of night. If all was good and fair we met,This earth had been the ParadiseIt never look’d to human eyesSince our first Sun arose and set. And is it that the haze […]

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,Or breaking into song by fits,Alone, alone, to where he sits,The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot, Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,I wander, often falling lame,And looking back to whence I came,Or on to where the pathway leads; And crying, How changed from where it ranThro’ lands […]

The path by which we twain did go,Which led by tracts that pleased us well,Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,From flower to flower, from snow to snow: And we with singing cheer’d the way,And, crown’d with all the season lent,From April on to April went,And glad at heart from May to May: But where […]

I sing to him that rests below,And, since the grasses round me wave,I take the grasses of the grave,And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then,And sometimes harshly will he speak:`This fellow would make weakness weak,And melt the waxen hearts of men.’ Another answers, `Let him be,He loves to […]

The lesser griefs that may be said,That breathe a thousand tender vows,Are but as servants in a houseWhere lies the master newly dead; Who speak their feeling as it is,And weep the fulness from the mind:`It will be hard,’ they say, `to findAnother service such as this.’ My lighter moods are like to these,That out […]