Sir Lewis Morris

O THRUSH, your song is passing sweet,
But never a song that you have sung
Is half so sweet as thrushes sang
When my dear love and I were young.
...

UNDER the picture gallery wall,
As a sea-leaf clings to a wave-worn rock,
Nor shrinks from the surging impetuous shock
Of the breakers which gather and whiten and fall
...

BEYOND the dim walls of the shadowy Past,
A sweet vague host of fancies flourishes,
Like garden seeds in some rough hollow cast,
Which all unasked the kind earth nourishes,
...

THE old lives are dead and gone and rotten,
The old thoughts shall never more be thought,
The old faiths have failed and are forgotten,
The old strifes are done, the fight is fought.
...

OH who shall say that we are free !
Surely life's chains are strong to bind
From youth to age, from birth to death,
Body and mind.
...

THE silent surfaces sleep
With a sullen viscous flow,
And scarce in the squalid deep
Swing the dead weeds to and fro,
...

I KNOW not if a keener smart
Can come to finer souls than his
Who hears men praise him, mind or heart,
For something higher than he is.
...

IF I were poor and weak,
Bankrupt of hope, and desolate of love;
Without a tongue to speak
The strange dumb thoughts of thee which through me move ;
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THOU hast visited me with Thy storms,
And the vials of Thy sore displeasure
Thou hast poured on my head, like a bitter draught
Poured forth without stint or measure ;
...

I PACED along
The dim cathedral wrapped in reverend gloom :
I heard the sweet child's song
Spring upwards like a fountain ; and the boom
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LORD, the Giver of my days,
My heart is ready, my heart is ready ;
I dare not hold my peace, nor pause,
For I am fain to sing Thy praise.
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TAKE thou no thought for aught save right and truth,
Life holds for finer souls no equal prize ;
Honours and wealth are baubles to the wise,
And pleasure flies on swifter wing than youth.
...

To spring, to bloom, to fade,
This is the sum of the laborious years ;
Life preludes death as laughter ends in tears :
All things that God has made
...

OFT in the blazing summer noon,
And oft beneath the frosty moon,
When earth and air were hushed and still,
And absolute silence seemed to fill
...

WHO but has seen
Once in his life, when youth and health ran high,
The fair, clear face of truth
Grow dark to his eye ?
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SALT sprays deluge it, wild waves buffet it, hurricanes rave ;
Summer and winter, the depths of the ocean girdle it round ;
In leaden dawns, in golden noon-tides, in silvery moonlight
Never it ceases to hear the old sea's mystical sound.
...

IN Volhynia the peasant mothers,
When spring-time brings back the leaves,
And the first swallows dart and twitter
Under the cottage eaves,—
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FAITHFUL souls that watch and yearn,
Expectant of the coming light,
With kindling hearts and eyes that burn
With hope to see the rule of right ;
...

Vou see that tall house opposite ?
Three times within the fleeting year,
Since last the summer-time was here,
Great changes have gone over it.
...

WHAT shall it profit a man
To have stood by the source of things,
To have spent the fair years of his youthful prime
In mystical questionings ;
...