Break forth, break forth, O Sudbury town,
And bid your yards be gay
Up all your gusty streets and down,
For Lydia comes to-day!
I hear it on the wharves below;
And if I buy or sell,
The good folk as they churchward go
Have only this to tell.
My mother, just for love of her,
Unlocks her carvëd drawers;...
Her eyes be like the violets,
Ablow in Sudbury lane;
When she doth smile, her face is sweet
As blossoms after rain;
With grief I think of my gray hairs,
And wish me young again.
In comes she through the dark old door
Upon this Sabbath day;
And she doth bring the tender wind
That sings in bush and tree;
...
Fathered by March, the daffodils are here.
First, all the air grew keen with yesterday,
And once a thrush from out some hollow gray
On a field’s edge, where whitening stalks made cheer,
Fluted the last unto the budding year;
Now that the wind lets loose from orchard spray
Plum bloom and peach bloom down the dripping way,
Their punctual...
When i consider Life and its few years—
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street—
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
...
Battles nor songs can from oblivion save,
But Fame upon a white deed loves to build:
From out that cup of water Sidney gave,
Not one drop has been spilled.
Brother of mine, good monk with cowlëd head,
Walled from that world which thou hast long since fled,
And pacing thy green close beyond the sea,
I send my heart to thee.
Down gust-sweet walks, bordered by lavender,
While eastward, westward, the mad swallows whir,
All afternoon poring thy missal fair,
Serene thou pacest there.
...
Bathsheba came out to the sun,
Out to our wallëd cherry-trees;
The tears adown her cheek did run,
Bathsheba standing in the sun,
Telling the bees.
My mother had that moment died;
Unknowing, sped I to the trees,
And plucked Bathsheba’s hand aside;
Then caught the name that there she cried
Telling the bees.
Her...
Dark, thinned, beside the wall of stone,
The box dripped in the air;
Its odor through my house was blown
Into the chamber there.
Remote and yet distinct the scent,
The sole thing of the kind,
As though one spoke a word half meant
That left a sting behind.
I knew not Grief would go from me,
And naught of it be plain,...
Snatch the departing mood;
Make yours its emptying reed, and pipe us still
Faith in the time, faith in our common blood,
Faith in the least of good:
Song cannot fail if these its spirits fill!
What if your heritage be
The huddled trees along the smoky ways;
At a street’s end the stretch of lilac sea;
The vender, swart but free,...
I am Thy grass, O Lord!
I grow up sweet and tall
But for a day, beneath Thy sword
To lie at evenfall.
Yet have I not enough
In that brief day of mine?
The wind, the bees, the wholesome stuff
The sun pours out like wine.
Behold, this is my crown,—
Love will not let me be;
Love holds me here; Love cuts...
