On this decline of Christmas Day
The empty street is fogged and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.

The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling

Seven buxom women abreast, and arm in arm,
Trudge down the hill, tip-toed,
And breathing warm;
They must perforce trudge thus, to keep upright
On the glassy ice-bound road,

And they must get to market whether or no,
Provisions running low
With the nearing Saturday night,
While the lumbering van wherein they mostly ride
Can nowise go:
Yet loud their laughter as they stagger and slide!



Yell'ham Hill

I sat. It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
—People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.

I said and sang her excellence:
They called it laud undue.
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
Yet what was homage far above
The plain deserts of my olden Love
Proved verity of my new.

"She moves a sylph in picture-land,
Where nothing frosts the air:"
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
"To all winged pipers overhead
She is known by shape and song," I said,
Conscious of licence there.

I sang of her in a dim old hall
Dream-built too fancifully,
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,

We waited for the sun
To break its cloudy prison
(For day was not yet done,
And night still unbegun)
Leaning by the dial.

After many a trial--
We all silent there--
It burst as new-arisen,
Throwing a shade to where
Time travelled at that minute.

Little saw we in it,
But this much I know,
Of lookers on that shade,
Her towards whom it made
Soonest had to go.

Brother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening!--
For we know not that we go not
When to-day's pale pinions fold
Where they be that sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
Speak of queenly Nature's ways,
Means, and moods,--well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far
(Said they there), the Mother's are;
Yet she never shows endeavour
To protect from warrings wild
Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house

The Frost in flame that Louers finde,
And swelting heat in chilly colde,
So quite contrary are by kinde,
As strange it seemeth to beholde,
Strange is the feare that makes them fainte,
And strange the care that chokes their ioy,
Yet stranger passions me attaynte,
The onely Nursse of mine annoy.

Under the Dídima lies a green dell,
Where fresh from the forest the blue waters swell;
And fast by that brook stands a yellow-wood tree,
Which shelters the spot that is dearest to me.

Down by the streamlet my heifers are grazing;
In the pool of the guanas the herd-boy is gazing;
Under the shade my Amána is singing—
The shade of the tree where her cradle is swinging.

When I come from the upland as daylight is fading,
Though spent with the chase, and the game for my lading,
My nerves are new-strung, and my fond heart is swelling,

Fools for themselues will Treasure prize
Some dazling greatness blinds
Beauty alone can charm our eyes
And loue delight our minds
Beauty alone can charme our eyes
And loue delight our minds

What is the use of wealth or power
By which wee men subdue
If not in order to gaine more
To vanquish women too
If not in order &c.

Beauty's the sum of all delights
Without loue life were vaine
The Ambitious toyle, the valient fight
For this for this Kings reign
The Ambitious toyle &c.

Who er on these fix their desires

While footman-like he waits in every hall,
His ill-matched wife is well received by all;
Graceful and comely she, he scarce a man,
A dire contrast of scald-crow with a swan.