Neptune,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
'Tired in their silver, they move,
And circling, whisper and say,
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight
Through which we stray.
MANY A MICKLE
A little sound ---
Only a little, a little ---
The breath in a reed,
A trembling fiddle;
A trumpet's ring,
The shuddering drum;
So all the glory, bravery, hush
Of music come.
A little sound ---
Only a stir and a sigh
Of each green leaf
Its fluttering neighbor by;
Oak on to oak,
The wide dark forest through ---
So o'er the watery wheeling world
The night winds go.
A little sound,
Only a little, a little ---
The thin high drone
Of the simmering kettle,
The gathering frost,
The click of needle and thread;
Mother, the fading wall, the dream,
The drowsy bed.
WILL EVER?
Will he ever be weary of wandering,
The flaming sun?
Ever weary of waning in lovelight,
The white still moon?
Will ever a shepherd come
With a crook of simple gold,
And lead all the little stars
Like lambs to the fold?
Will ever the Wanderer sail
From over the sea,
Up the river of water,
To the stones to me?
Will he take us all into his ship,
Dreaming, and waft us far,
To where in the clouds of the West
The Islands are?
SONGS
THE SONG OF THE SECRET
Where is beauty?
Gone, gone:
The cold winds have taken it
With their faint moan;
The white stars have shaken it,
Trembling down,
Into the pathless deeps of the sea.
Gone, gone
Is beauty from me.
The clear naked flower
Is faded and dead;
The green-leafed willow,
Drooping her head,
Whispers low to the shade
Of her boughs in the stream,
Sighing a beauty,
Secret as dream.
THE SONG OF THE SOLDIERS
As I sat musing by the frozen dyke,
There was a man marching with a bright steel pike,
Marching in the dayshine like a ghost came he,
And behind me was the moaning and the murmur
Of the sea.
As I sat musing, 'twas not one but ten ---
Rank on rank of ghostly soldiers marching o'er the fen,
Marching in the misty air they showed in dreams to me,
And behind me was the shouting and the shattering
of the sea.
As I sat musing, 'twas a host in dark array,
With their horses and their cannon wheeling onward
to the fray,
Moving like a shado
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