I Would I Were a Child

Iwould I were a child, That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father! And follow thee with running feet, or rather Be led through dark and wild! How I would hold thy hand, My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting! Should darkness 'twixt thy face and mine come drifting, My heart would …

CHRISTMAS DAY, 1850

Beautiful stories wed with lovely daysLike words and music:-what shall be the taleOf love and nobleness that might availTo express in action what thissweetness says-The sweetness of a day of airs and raysThat are strange glories on the winter pale?Alas, O beauty, all my fancies fail!I cannot tell a story in thy praise!Thou hast, thou …

World’s Desire

Love, there is a castle built in a country desolate,On a rock above a forest where the trees are grim and great,Blasted with the lightning sharp—giant boulders strewn between,And the mountains rise above, and the cold ravineEchoes to the crushing roar and thunder of a mighty riverRaging down a cataract. Very tower and forest quiverAnd …

A True Hymn

My joy, my life, my crown!My heart was meaning all the day,Somewhat it fain would say:And still it runneth mutt’ring up and downWith only this, My joy, my life, my crown. Yet slight not these few words:If truly said, they may take partAmong the best in art.The fineness which a hymne or psalm affords,Is, when …

Night

After the fret and failure of this day, And weariness of thought, O Mother Night, Come with soft kiss to soothe our care away And all our little tumults set to right; Most pitiful of all death's kindred fair, Riding above us through the curtained air On thy dusk car, thou scatterest to the earth …

The Sun is Gone Down

The sun is gone down And the moon's in the sky But the sun will come up And the moon be laid by. The flower is asleep. But it is not dead, When the morning shines It will lift its head. When winter comes It will die! No, no, It will only hide From the …

Surprised by Joy

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind  I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom  But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,  That spot which no vicissitude can find?  Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—  But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,  Even for the least division of an hour,  Have I …

REASON

Set on the soul’s acropolis the reason stands A virgin, arm’d, commercing with celestial light, And he who sins against her has defiled his own Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white; So clear is reason. But how dark imagining, Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night: Dark is her brow, the beauty of …

To Hilaire Belloc

For every tiny town or place
 God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree: You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town's, The largest lamp on Campden Hill. Yea; Heaven is everywhere at …

Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness, John Donne

Since I am coming to that holy room,          Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come          I tune the instrument here at the door,          And what I must do then, think here before.  Whilst my physicians by their love are grown          Cosmographers, and I their map, …