When the blasts beat loud and the tempests shriek,
 And the winds are smote as the chords of a lyre,
 I curtain the cold where the corners leak,
 Tossing the logs till the flames leap higher,
 As I sit on the hearth while the rafters creak,
 Feeding the fangs of the hungry fire.
 (Hark! ’tis a child on the howling plain!
 Nay, the fir-tree’s tap on the window pane.)
Do you hear her knock? Are her feet on the stones?
 She may call in vain, for the storm is loud,
 And her speech is the rattle of rigid bones.
 Perchance she is lost where the thickets crowd;
 It is far from the church where a vault she owns,
 And for cover she has but a crumbling shroud.
 (’Tis a mad soul clutched by a demon—hist!
 Nay, nay, but the wail of the wind, I wist.)
She enters the door with a blast of cold—
 She enters to me and to my embrace;
 Her fingers are freed from their fleshly fold,
 The veil is rent from her ashen face.
 To her sheet there lingers a scent of mould,
 Where the wily worms have woven a trace.
 (Hark! is it Love on the writhing rack!
 Nay, nay, but the wolves on a shepherd’s track.)
She has taken her seat at my board of pine,
 We have poured the water and broken the bread,
 I have pledged her health in the blood-red wine,
 She has bowed to me with her spectral head.
 I am hers forever, as she is mine,
 I shall lie with her in her nuptial bed.
 (Hark! ’tis a stroke on a coffin nail!
 Nay, the beat of your heart as the pulses fail!)
From her fleshless lips I have felt her kiss
 (The room is small, but the world is wide).
 What matter the honours that I shall miss,
 When I find her lying against my side?
 From the reefs of Fate God has spared me this—
 The love that is long and the breast of a bride.
 (For bone of my bone I have chosen Death!
 “Nay, nay—ah, love, I am Life,” she saith.)

TO MY DOG

O tried and true! together we have passed
 Life’s whirlpool, and have felt Fate’s heaviest blow—
 Shall I, then, stand the traitor at the last?
 Or prize a heaven that you could never know?

ENGLAND’S GREATNESS

AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DARWIN, 1896

England’s greatness! not the sword avenging,
 Not the nations bowed beneath her heel;
 Not the cross of blood that to her kingdoms
 Sets its seal.
These are ghosts of old barbaric splendours,
 Rotting where Imperial Rome lies low;
 Things that thrill the heart like tales of slaughter
 Long ago.
Far beyond them is her glory shining,
 Brighter than the sword within the sun;
 It shall last when her superb oppressions
 All are done.
Other armies has she as victorious,
 Slayers these whose hands are clean of blood,
 Soldiers whose sublime and steadfast phalanx
 Wrong withstood.
England’s greatness! this abides unchanging,
 Won by arms that sound no loud refrains:
 When all wars and warriors shall have perished,
 Truth remains.

MARY

Daughter of dreams and visions,
 Flushed by the world’s desire,
 Empress of priests’ decisions,
 Priestess of altar fire—
 Treading a march immortal,
 As the Cross to the sunrise swings,
 Passing the inmost portal,
 Over the crowns of kings—
 By the worship with which we woo thee,
 By the hymns that our hearts repeat,
 By the flames that have burned unto thee,
 By the prayers that have warmed thy feet,
 By the moons that have risen below thee,
 By the stars that have set on thy brow,
 By the saints that have suffered to know thee,
 We hail thee “Blessed,” now.
Mother of all the Sorrows,
 Pierced by the world’s despair,
 Wearing a veil that borrows
 Gloom from our earthly air;
 Broken by ceaseless sighing,
 Ravaged by endless tears,
 Bearing thy pangs undying
 Into the dying years—
 By the sweat on thy brow that paleth,
 By the Cross where thy heart has lain,
 By memory’s pang that naileth
 Thy heart to the wood again,
 By the passions that rise below thee,
 By the sorrows enthroned on thy brow,
 By the hearts that have broken to know thee,
 We hail thee “Blessed,” now.

THE HUNTER

I sit within the sodden gloom,
 Amid the dead that wall the room;
 Through galleries damp that reek decay,
 My stumbling feet have groped the way.
 Mine eyes that shudder at the light
 Have read the secrets of the night—
 From skeletons with toothless jaws
 I wring the utterance of the laws.
Where foul the spider makes his lair,
 I con the lesson of his care.
 In threads too fine for mortal eyes
 I read Eternal Mysteries.
 In graves of mouldered love and lust,
 I search for secrets of the dust;
 Through palls with time and ashes spread,
 I plunge my hands among the dead.
Then forth into the light of day,
 I fare again upon my way.
 A grain of sand, a blade of grass,
 Smite me to silence as I pass.
 In living men and worms I trace
 Old allegories of the race;
 In weeds put forth from out the sod
 I read the Scriptures of my God.
Unto the hills I mount and see
 The vultures of the mountains flee;
 My failing eyes I backward cast
 To glean the harvest of the past.
 My tottering feet have paused alone
 Before the barriers of the known—
 For onward still, through wrong and ruth,
 I fare—a hunter of the Truth.