I see a fair young couple in a wood,
     And as they go, one bends to take a flower,
     That so may be embalmed their happy hour,
     And in another day, a kindred mood,
     Haply together, or in solitude,
     Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,
     The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,
     Wherewith by their young blood they are endued
     To move all enviable, framed in May,
     And of an aspect sisterly with Truth: 
     Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed: 
     Who will be prompted on some pallid day
     To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,
     Even such, and by this token, is their youth.

     Lucifer in starlight

     On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. 
     Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
     Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
     Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. 
     Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. 
     And now upon his western wing he leaned,
     Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
     Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. 
     Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
     With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
     He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
     Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. 
     Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
     The army of unalterable law.

     The star Sirius

     Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales
     To dotlings under moonlight still art keen
     With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien
     Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: 
     Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails,
     Reducing many lustrous to the lean: 
     Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
     To show what source divine is, and prevails. 
     Long watches through, at one with godly night,
     I mark thee planting joy in constant fire;
     And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire
     Life to the spirit, passion for the light,
     Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight
     Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.

     Sense and spirit

     The senses loving Earth or well or ill
     Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. 
     The mind is in their trammels, and lights not
     By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will
     To find in nature things which less may chill
     An ardour that desires, unknowing what. 
     Till we conceive her living we go distraught,
     At best but circle-windsails of a mill. 
     Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life
     Creatively has given us blood and breath
     For endless war and never wound unhealed,
     The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field
     Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife
     To read her own and trust her down to death.