Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

  • O Child of Nations, giant-limbed,
      Who stand’st among the nations now,
    Unheeded, unadored, unhymned,
      With unanointed brow:

    How long the ignoble sloth, how long
      The trust in greatness not thine own?
    Surely the lion’s brood is strong...

  • From “Ariadne”
    HUNG like a rich pomegranate o’er the sea
      The ripened moon; along the trancèd sand
    The feather-shadowed ferns drooped dreamfully;
    The solitude’s evading harmony
      Mingled remotely over sea and land;
    A light wind woke and whispered...

  • I Hear the low wind wash the softening snow,
    The low tide loiter down the shore. The night,
    Full filled with April forecast hath no light.
    The salt wave on the sedge-flat pulses slow.
    Through the hid furrows lisp in murmurous flow
    The thaw’s shy ministers...

  • When the gray lake-water rushes
    Past the dripping alder-bushes,
        And the bodeful autumn wind
    In the fir-tree weeps and hushes,—

    When the air is sharply damp
    Round the solitary camp,
        And the moose-bush in the thicket
    Glimmers like a...

  • In the wide awe and wisdom of the night
        I saw the round world rolling on its way,
    Beyond significance of depth or height,
        Beyond the interchange of dark and day.
    I marked the march to which is set no pause,
        And that stupendous orbit, round...

  • O Thou who hast beneath Thy hand
    The dark foundations of the land,—
    The motion of whose ordered thought
    An instant universe hath wrought,—

    Who hast within Thine equal heed
    The rolling sun, the ripening seed,
    The azure of the speedwell’s eye,...

  • O Thou who lovest not alone
    The swift success, the instant goal,
    But hast a lenient eye to mark
    The failures of th’ inconstant soul,

    Consider not my little worth,—
    The mean achievement, scamped in act,
    The high resolve and low result,
    The...