Written after Seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting
“God made man in His own image,
In the image of God made He him.”
—GENESIS. i. 27.
BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in...
I hear you, little bird,
Shouting a-swing above the broken wall.
Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all.
Sing to my soul in the deep, still wood:
’T is wonderful beyond the wildest word:
I ’d tell it, too, if I could.
Oft when the white still...
The muses wrapped in mysteries of light
Came in a rush of music on the night;
And I was lifted wildly on quick wings,
And borne away into the deep of things.
The dead doors of my being broke apart;
A wind of rapture blew across the heart;
The...
The spirit OF EARTH with still, restoring hands,
Mid ruin moves, in glimmering chasm gropes,
And mosses mantle and the bright flower opes;
But Death the Ploughman wanders in all lands,
And to the last of Earth his furrow stands.
The grave is never hidden:...
I looked one night, and there Semiramis,
With all her mourning doves about her head,
Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell,
Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon
Snatches of song they sang to her of old
Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh.
And...
She comes like the hush and beauty of the night,
And sees too deep for laughter;
Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.
I never build a song by night or day,
Of breaking ocean or of blowing whin,
But in some wondrous unexpected way,
Like light upon a road, my Love comes in.
And when I go at night upon the hill,
My heart is lifted on mysterious wings:
My Love...
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
...
