Have you not seen
The dove-grey waters' undulating sheen
Whereon a bird can rest
Its rounded, slowly, slowly heaving breast,
Whilst all the blue-aired delicate mountains round
Attend, without a sound?
So, freed from fear, man's first primeval crime,
A heart might rest upon the lap of time.

Beside the road to Coursegoules
Are shepherdess and sheep.
The sun is hot. The shade is cool
Beside the road to Coursegoules,
And every man's a fool, a fool
Who does not fall asleep
Beside the road to Coursegoules
And shepherdess and sheep.

This is the natal day of him
Who, born in want and poverty,
Burst from his fetters, and arose
The freest of the free;—

Arose to tell the watching earth
What lowly men could feel and do,—
To show that mighty, heaven-like souls
In cottage hamlets grew.

Burns! thou hast given us a name
To shield us from the taunts of scorn;—
The plant that creeps amid the soil
A glorious flower hath borne.

Before the proudest of the earth
We stand with an uplifted brow;
Like us, THOU wast a toil-worn man,
And we are noble now!

Where is your cross, poor homeless One? I see
The piteous stretching of your hands and feet,
This is the gesture, somber and complete,
In bloodless bronze, of your long agony;
And where the nails that held you to the tree?
Here are the faint stigmata, cruel-sweet,
And in my heart there sounds the hammer's beat:
O Son of God, be crucified in me!

Come, walk my Calvary of womanhood,
Taste the wild hyssop of my hidden tear,
Wear my gay crown and know my laughing spear,
Call Magdalene in purple to my rood:

Last year I was hoeing,
Hoeing mangel-wurzels,
Hoeing mangel-wurzels all day in the sun,
Hoeing for the squire
Down in Gloucestershire,
Willy-nilly till the sweaty job was done.

Now I'm in the 'wurzels,
In the mangel-wurzels,
All day in the 'wurzels 'neath the Belgian sun:
But among this little lot
It's a different job I've got—
For you don't hoe mangel-wurzels with a gun.

We sat together by the lake.
So smooth it seemed, so still, so fair,
That neither of us dared to break
The silent evening air.

We watched the rocks and forests glow
Within the sinking sun's last beams
Reflected tranquilly below
Like a charmed land of dreams.

At length you sighed and raised your head,
And smiling looked into my eyes.
Had you but smiled and nothing said,
Ah love, you had been most wise.

But wisdom comes not till love dies,
Alas, with the first word you spoke,
The light had faded from the skies,

Deeply and long the sap must flow
Ere the merest layer of elm can grow.

Many a wave's recurrent shock
Is needed to smooth the tiniest rock.

Thousands of leaves must fade and fall
To make the mould by the garden wall.

Thus, as the patient seasons roll,
Slowly is fashioned a human soul.

Purpose and failure and purpose still,
Steadily moved by a quiet will—

Layer on layer in sturdy way,
Hardly seen the growth of a day—

Times of failure, and fear and fall,
But one strong tendency through it all—

The hounds of God across the years
Are running swift and true.
Far and away they seem to play,
But they're tracking me and you.

The king is seated on his throne,
His courtiers all around him,
They see him start and grasp his heart,—
The hounds of God have found him.

At low midnite the wastrel wakes
Afraid upon his bed,
For the hollow sounds of the baying hounds
Are ringing in his head.

The wicked woman wipes her lips
And says, “'Tis naught! 'Tis naught!”
Yet the velvet feet of the hounds so fleet

Barbara, though you aren't a boy,
As you'd have liked, I wish you joy,
And all the things that I think best—
Laughter, a Home, a Heart at rest,
Old books and Love, to make you wise,
A man, like you, with steady eyes:
Children, tribes of them (and they'll fight,
And ask you questions day and night);
And, Barbara, when you've got to die,
A grand-daughter to say good-bye.

O would not Life be charming
Could we get rid of clocks,
The still ones and alarming
That break on sleep with shocks?

Then it would be respected
And worthier far of Man
Than when by springs directed
From gold or a tin can.

Why should Man's life be reckoned
By anything so queer
As that which splits the second
But cannot tell the year?

If we got rid of watches
The trains would cease to run,
We could not fight a battle-ship
Or aim a battle gun,

Nor tune the little engines