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.
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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....
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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...
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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... -
Along the pastoral ways I go,
To get the healing of the trees,
The ghostly news the hedges know;
To hive me honey like the bees,
Against the time of snow.The common hawthorn that I see,
Beside the sunken wall astir,
Or any other blossoming tree,
Is each God’s fair white gospeller,
His book upon the knee.A...
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An english lad, who, reading in a book,
A ponderous, leathern thing set on his knee,
Saw the broad violet of the Egean Sea
Lap at his feet as it were village brook.
Wide was the east; the gusts of morning shook;
Immortal laughter beat along that shore;
Pan, crouching in the reeds, piped as of yore;
The gods came down and thundered from... -
Keep back the one word more,
Nor give of your whole store;
For, it may be, in Art’s sole hour of need,
Lacking that word, you shall be poor indeed. -
I see a tiny fluttering form
Beneath the soft snow’s soundless storm,
’Mid a strange noonlight palely shed
Through mocking cloud-rifts overhead.All other birds are far from sight,—
They think the day has turned to night;
But he is cast in hardier mould,
This chirping courier of the cold.He does not come from lands forlorn,...