No! a sharper sound
Would wake you not;
Not the sweetest fluting
Tease you back to thought. 
Yet the scratching mouse
Makes all my flesh a nervous
Haunted house.

O, the dream, the dream
Must be sweet and deep
If life’s scratching’s heard not
On your cold sleep. 
Yet if you should hear it,
So furious and fretful—­
How could you bear it?

HAPPINESS

I have found happiness who looked not for it. 
    There was a green fresh hedge,
    And willows by the river side,
    And whistling sedge.

The heaviness I felt was all around. 
    No joy sang in the wind. 
    Only dull slow life everywhere,
    And in my mind.

Then from the sedge a bird cried; and all changed. 
    Heaviness turned to mirth: 
    The willows the stream’s cheek caressed,
    The sun the earth.

What was it in the bird’s song worked such change? 
    The grass was wonderful. 
    I did not dream such beauty was
    In things so dull.

What was it in the bird’s song gave the water
    That living, sentient look? 
    Lent the rare brightness to the hedge? 
    That sweetness shook

Down on the green path by the running water? 
    Or the small daisies lit
    With light of the white northern stars
    In dark skies set?

What was it made the whole world marvellous? 
    Mere common things were joys. 
    The cloud running upon the grass,
    Children’s faint noise,

The trees that grow straight up and stretch wide arms,
    The snow heaped in the skies,
    The light falling so simply on all;
    My lifted eyes

That all this startling aching beauty saw? 
    I felt the sharp excess
    Of joy like the strong sun at noon—­
    Insupportable bliss!

COMFORTABLE LIGHT

Most comfortable Light,
Light of the small lamp burning up the night,
With dawn enleagued against the beaten dark;
Pure golden perfect spark;

Or sudden wind-bright flame,
That but the strong-handed wind can urge or tame;
Chill loveliest light the kneeling clouds between,
Silverly serene;

Comfort of happy light,
That mouse-like leaps amid brown leaves, cheating sight;
Clear naked stars, burning with swift intense
Earthward intelligence;—­

Sensitive, single
Points in the dark inane that purely tingle
With eager fire, pouring night’s circles through
Their living blue;

Dark light still waters hold;
Broad silver moonpath trodden into gold: 
Candle-flame glittering through the traveller’s night—­
Most comfortable light....

And lovelier, the eye
Where light from darkness shines unfathomably,
Light secret, clear, shallow, profound, known, strange,
Constant alone in change:—­