Harold Monro

When I returned at sunset,
The serving-maid was singing softly
Under the dark stairs, and in the house
Twilight had entered like a moon-ray.
...

When the tea is brought at five o'clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
...

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?
Give them me.
...

WHEN you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
...

What I saw was just one eye
In the dawn as I was going :
A bird can carry all the sky
...

O gentle vision in the dawn:
My spirit over faint cool water glides,
Child of the day,
To thee;
...

You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff,
Asking for that expected walk,
(Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff)
...

One day, the vine
That clomb on god’s own house
Cried, “I will not
...

HAPPY boy, happy boy,
David the immortal-willed,
Youth a thousand thousand times
Slain, but not once killed,
...

Tell me about that harvest field.
Oh! Fifty acres of living bread.
The colour has painted itself in my heart;
The form is patterned in my head.
...

This might have been a place for sleep,
But, as from that small hollow there
Hosts of bright thistledown begin
...

I
If suddenly a clod of earth should rise,
And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love,
How one would tremble, and in what surprise
...

The holy boy
Went from his mother out in the cool of the day
Over the sun-parched fields
And in among the olives shining green and shining grey.
...

Since man has been articulate,
Mechanical, improvidently wise,
(Servant of Fate),
He has not understood the little cries ...
...

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn:
It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond
Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond
...

It is the sacred hour: above the far
Low emerald hills that northward fold,
Calmly, upon the blue the evening star
Floats, wreathed in dusky gold.
...

I
The train! The twleve o'clock for paradise.
Hurry, or it will try to creep away.
Out in the country every one is wise:
...

The tough hand closes gently on the load;
Out of the mind, a voice
Calls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work,
...

I
Fit for perpetual worship is the power
That holds our bodies safely to the earth.
...

Here, in this other world, they come and go
With easy dream-like movements to and fro.
They stare through lovely eyes, yet do not seek
...