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Fragment: The Baker's Cart

I have seen the Baker's horse
As he had been accustomed at your door
Stop with the loaded wain, when o'er his head
Smack went the whip, and you were left, as if
You were not born to live, or there had been
No bread in all the land. Five little ones,
They at the rumbling of the distant wheels
Had all come forth, and, ere the grove of birch
Concealed the wain, into their wretched hut
They all returned. While in the road I stood
Pursuing with involuntary look
The wain now seen no longer, to my side
came, a pitcher in her hand

An Exhortation

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

I must hunt down the prize

I must hunt down the prize
Where my heart lists.
Must see the eagle's bulk, render'd in mists,
Hang of a treble size.

Must see the waters roll
Where the seas set
Towards wastes where round the ice-blocks tilt and fret
Not so far from the pole.

or

Must see the green seas roll
Where waters set
Towards those wastes where the ice-blocks tilt and fret,
Not so far from the pole.

The Mind is so near itself

“Thou solitary!” the Blackbird cried,
“I, from the happy Wren,
Linnet and Blackcap, Woodlark, Thrush,
Perched all upon a sweetbrier bush,
Have come at cold of midnight-tide
To ask thee, Why and when
Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing
In solemn hush of evening,
So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing—
Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail,
Most melancholic Nightingale?

Do not the dews of darkness steep
All pinings of the day in sleep?
Why, then, when rocked in starry nest
We mutely couch, secure, at rest,
Doth thy lone heart delight to make

To Sir Thomas Roe

Thou hast begun well, Roe, which stand well too,
And I know nothing more thou hast to do.
He that is round within himself, and straight,
Need seek no other strength, no other height;
Fortune upon him breaks herself, if ill,
And what would hurt his virtue makes it still.
That thou at once, then, nobly may'st defend
With thine own course the judgement of thy friend,
Be always to thy gathered self the same:
And study conscience, more than thou wouldst fame.
Though both be good, the latter yet is worst,
And ever is ill got without the first.

To Sir John Radcliffe

How like a column, Radcliffe, left alone
For the great mark of virtue, those being gone
Who did, alike with thee, thy house upbear,
Stand'st thou, to show the times what you all were!
Two bravely in the battle fell, and died,
Upbraiding rebels' arms, and barbarous pride;
And two, that would have fallen as great, as they,
The Belgic fever ravishèd away.
Thou, that art all their valour, all their spirit,
And thine own goodness to increase thy merit,
Than whose I do not know a whiter soul,
Nor could I, had I seen all Nature's roll,

To Thomas, Earl of Suffolk

Since men have left to do praiseworthy things,
Most think all praises flatteries. But truth brings
That sound, and that authority with her name,
As, to be raised by her, is only fame.
Stand high, then, Howard, high in eyes of men,
High in thy blood, thy place, but highest then,
When, in men's wishes, so thy virtues wrought,
As all thy honours were by them first sought:
And thou designed to be the same thou art,
Before thou wert it, in each good man's heart.
Which, by no less confirmed, than thy king's choice,
Proves, that is God's, which was the people's voice.
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