RELUCTANT Morn, whose meagre radiance lies
With doubtful glimmer on the farthest hills,
How long shall men, reiterant of their ills,
With peevish invocation bid thee rise
To burn to noontide glory in the skies
That now a gloom perplexed and starless fills,
And seek from thee and not their own strong wills
That perfect good which is not bought with sighs?
Why weep and wait for thee, though laggard, Morn,
With all thy joys of love and peace and light?
For us the mightier joy that rives the soul,

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light

A song of the setting sun!
The sky in the west is red,
And the day is all but done;
While yonder up overhead,
All too soon,
There rises so cold the cynic moon.

A Song of a Winter day!
The wind of the north doth blow,
From a sky that's chill and gray,
On fields where no crops now grow,
Fields long shorn
Of bearded barley and golden corn.

A song of a faded flower!
'Twas plucked in the tender bud,
And fair and fresh for an hour,
In a Lady's hair it stood,
Now, ah! now,
Faded it lies in the dust and low.

(1894)

High headlands all jealously hide thee,
   O fairest of sea-girdled towns!
Thine Ocean-spouse smileth beside thee,
   While each headland threatens and frowns.
Like Venice, upheld on sea-pinion,
   And fated to reign o'er the free,
Thou wearest, in sign of dominion,
   The zone of the sea.

No winter thy fertile slope hardens,
   O new Florence, set in the South!
All lands give their flowers to thy gardens,

Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one,
And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer;
And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run,
Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year.
But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time,
I'd tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I'd strive
To praise that age when prose again has given way to rhyme,
The Indian Summer days of life when I'll be Sixty-five;
II
For then my work will all be done, my voyaging be past,

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,

In the rapture of life and of living,
I lift up my head and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
In the sweet-scented, sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather –
They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power,
In the pride and the pleasure of wealth
(For who dares dispute me my dower
Of talents and youth-time and health?) ,
I can laugh at the world and its sages –
I am greater than seers who are sad,

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.

My Daphne's Haire is twisted Gold,
Bright starres a-piece her Eyes doe hold,
My Daphne's Brow inthrones the Graces,
My Daphne's Beauty staines all Faces,
On Daphne's Cheeke grow Rose and Cherry,
On Daphne's Lip a sweeter Berry,
Daphne's snowy Hand but touch'd does melt,
And then no heauenlier Warmth is felt,
My Daphne's voice tunes all the Spheres,
My Daphne's Musick charmes all Eares.
Fond am I thus to sing her prayse ;
These glories now are turn'd to Bayes.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet, dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;