“When birds were songless”

When birds were songless on the bough
    I heard thee sing. 
The world was full of winter, thou
    Wert full of spring.

To-day the world’s heart feels anew
    The vernal thrill,
And thine beneath the rueful yew
    Is wintry chill.

THE MOCK SELF

Few friends are mine, though many wights there be
Who, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim
To be myself, and hath my face and name,
And whose thin fraud I wink at privily,
Account this light impostor very me. 
What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim
Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame? 
I care not, so he leave my true self free,
Impose not on me also; but alas! 
I too, at fault, bewildered, sometimes take
Him for myself, and far from mine own sight,
Torpid, indifferent, doth mine own self pass;
And yet anon leaps suddenly awake,
And spurns the gibbering mime into the night.

“Thy voice from inmost dreamland calls”

Thy voice from inmost dreamland calls;
  The wastes of sleep thou makest fair;
Bright o’er the ridge of darkness falls
  The cataract of thy hair.

The morn renews its golden birth: 
  Thou with the vanquished night dost fade;
And leav’st the ponderable earth
  Less real than thy shade.

IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD

(August 18, 1890)

’Twas at this season, year by year,
The singer who lies songless here
Was wont to woo a less austere,
    Less deep repose,
Where Rotha to Winandermere
    Unresting flows,—­

Flows through a land where torrents call
To far-off torrents as they fall,
And mountains in their cloudy pall
    Keep ghostly state,
And Nature makes majestical
    Man’s lowliest fate.

There, ’mid the August glow, still came
He of the twice-illustrious name,
The loud impertinence of fame
    Not loth to flee—­
Not loth with brooks and fells to claim
    Fraternity.

Linked with his happy youthful lot,
Is Loughrigg, then, at last forgot? 
Nor silent peak nor dalesman’s cot
    Looks on his grave. 
Lulled by the Thames he sleeps, and not
    By Rotha’s wave.

’Tis fittest thus! for though with skill
He sang of beck and tarn and ghyll,
The deep, authentic mountain-thrill
    Ne’er shook his page! 
Somewhat of worldling mingled still
    With bard and sage.

And ’twere less meet for him to lie
Guarded by summits lone and high
That traffic with the eternal sky
    And hear, unawed,
The everlasting fingers ply
    The loom of God,

Than, in this hamlet of the plain,
A less sublime repose to gain,
Where Nature, genial and urbane,
    To man defers,
Yielding to us the right to reign,
    Which yet is hers.