Poems of Love & Friendship
Family and Home
A Cradle Song
Mother And Babe
Cradle Song
A Child’s Laughter
A Question
Sweet And Low
The Children’s Hour
My Early Home
To Flush, My Dog
Milk For The Cat
A Visit From St. Nicholas
Mother To Child
It Is A Beauteous Evening
Mother o’ Mine
My Grandmother’s Love Letters
The First Snow-Fall
To My Mother
Marriage
On His Deceased Wife
A Tragedy
She Was A Phantom Of Delight
The Voice
To My Dear and Loving Husband
The Widower
An Epitaph Upon Husband and Wife
Winter Evening
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
To My Daughter Betty, The Gift Of God
Love and Romance
Loving In Truth, And Fain In Verse My Love To Show
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways
The Garden Of Love
My Luve’s Like A Red, Red Rose
Go, Lovely Rose
Cherry-Ripe
She Walks In Beauty
Love’s Philosophy
One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand
The Good-Morrow
The Clod and the Pebble
The Sun Rising
You Smiled, You Spoke And I Believed
The Definition Of Love
To Celia
Severed Selves
Love’s Secret
To My Inconstant Mistress
The Appeal
His Lady’s Cruelty
Carrier Letter
Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds
To His Coy Mistress
Silent Noon
At The Mid Hour Of Night
The First Day
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art
Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
False Though She Be
My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun
Without Her
Song
Ruth
Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal
Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor!
A Broken Appointment
Elizabeth Of Bohemia
To Mary
Renouncement
Meeting At Night
When We Two Parted
Echo
The Ecstasy
To His Mistress Going To Bed
To Mary
The Apparition
Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known
Longing
Sudden Light
Love Is Enough
Your Letter, Lady, Came Too Late
To Lucasta, On Going To The Wars
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
The Lady Of Shalott
Travel and Place
From A Railway Carriage
London
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Exile
Symphony In Yellow
The Way Through The Woods
Wenlock Edge
Dover Beach
Home Thoughts, From Abroad
My Heart’s In The Highlands
A Niagara Landscape
A Canadian Boat Song
A Psalm Of Montreal
Home Thoughts, From The Sea
Adlestrop
North Labrador
Midnight On The Great Western
On A Rhine Steamer
The Banks o’ Doon
Sweet Afton
In Rotten Row
Facing West From California’s Shores
To Brooklyn Bridge
Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City
I Travelled Among Unknown Men
I Knew By The Smoke That So Gracefully Curled
The Song Of Sheffield
Returning, We Hear the Larks
Humour and Nonsense
Jabberwocky
A Sonnet
The Walrus And The Carpenter
The Pig
A Terrible Infant
The Owl And The Pussy-Cat
How Pleasant To Know Mr Lear
Fable
The Elephant, Or The Force of Habit
When Lovely Woman
Thy Heart
Miniver Cheevy
The Pessimist
Excelsior
Ode On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes
Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog
Phyllis’s Age
Jenny Kiss’d Me
How Doth The Little Crocodile
The Jumblies
Wynken, Blynken, And Nod
Old Nick In Sorel
The Boy Of Quebec
The Camel’s Hump
The Lazy Writer
A Cradle Song
Sweet dreams, form a shade
O’er my lovely infant’s head!
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams
By happy, silent, moony beams!
Sweet Sleep, with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown!
Sweet Sleep, angel mild,
Hover o’er my happy child!
Sweet smiles, in the night
Hover over my delight!
Sweet smiles, mother’s smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.
Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes!
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.
Sleep, sleep, happy child!
All creation slept and smiled.
Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,
While o’er thee thy mother weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face
Holy image I can trace;
Sweet babe, once like thee
Thy Maker lay, and wept for me:
Wept for me, for thee, for all,
When He was an infant small.
Thou His image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee!
Smiles on thee, on me, on all,
Who became an infant small;
Infant smiles are His own smiles;
Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.
Mother And Babe
I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe — hush’d, I study them long and long.
Cradle Song
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,
You are care, and care must keep you;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
A Child’s Laughter
All the bells of heaven may ring,
All the birds of heaven may sing,
All the wells on earth may spring,
All the winds on earth may bring
All sweet sounds together;
Sweeter far than all things heard,
Hand of harper, tone of bird,
Sound of woods at sundawn stirred,
Welling water’s winsome word,
Wind in warm wan weather,
One thing yet there is, that none
Hearing ere its chime be done
Knows not well the sweetest one
Heard of man beneath the sun,
Hoped in heaven hereafter;
Soft and strong and loud and light,
Very sound of very light
Heard from morning’s rosiest height,
When the soul of all delight
Fills a child’s clear laughter.
Golden bells of welcome rolled
Never forth such notes, nor told
Hours so blithe in tones so bold,
As the radiant mouth of gold
Here that rings forth heaven.
If the golden-crested wren
Were a nightingale — why, then,
Something seen and heard of men
Might be half as sweet as when
Laughs a child of seven.
A Question
Why is it, God, that mothers’ hearts are made
So very deep and wide?
How does it help the world that we should hold
Such swelling floods of pain till we are old,
Because when we were young one grave was laid —
One baby died?
Sweet And Low
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west,
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
The Children’s Hour
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away.
My Early Home
Here sparrows build upon the trees,
And stock-dove hides her nest:
The leaves are winnowed by the breeze
Into a calmer rest;
The black-cap’s song was very sweet;
That used the rose to kiss;
It made the paradise complete:
My early home was this.
The redbreast from the sweetbrier bush
Dropt down to pick the worm;
On the horse-chestnut sang the thrush,
O’er the house where I was born.
The moonlight, like a shower of pearls,
Fell o’er this ‘bower of bliss’,
And on the bench sat boys and girls;
My early home was this.
The old house stooped just like a cave,
Thatched o’er with mosses green;
Winter around the walls would rave,
But all was calm within;
The trees are here all green again,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But flowers and trees seemed sweeter then;
My early home was this.
To Flush, My Dog
Yet, my pretty sportive friend,
Little is’t to such an end
That I praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in these drooping ears,
And this glossy fairness.
But of thee it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary —
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
Round the sick and dreary.
Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning.
This dog only, waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone
Love remains for shining.
Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares, and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow.
This dog only, crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept,
Sharing in the shadow.
Other dogs of loyal cheer
Bounded at the whistle clear,
Up the woodside hieing.
This dog only, watched in reach
Of a faintly uttered speech,
Or a louder sighing.
And if one or two quick tears
Dropped upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double —
Up he sprang in eager haste,
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
In a tender trouble.
And this dog was satisfied
If a pale thin hand would glide
Down his dewlaps sloping —
Which he pushed his nose within,
After platforming his chin
On the palm left open.
Milk For The Cat
When the tea is brought at five o’clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
Is suddenly purring there.
At first she pretends, having nothing to do,
She has come in merely to blink by the grate,
But, though tea may be late or the milk may be sour,
She is never late.
And presently her agate eyes
Take a soft large milky haze,
And her independent casual glance
Becomes a stiff, hard gaze.
Then she stamps her claws or lifts her ears,
Or twists her tail and begins to stir,
Till suddenly all her lithe body becomes
One breathing, trembling purr.
The children eat and wriggle and laugh;
The two old ladies stroke their silk:
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.
The white saucer like some full moon descends
At last from the clouds of the table above;
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,
Transfigured with love.
She nestles over the shining rim,
Buries her chin in the creamy sea;
Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy paw
Is doubled under each bending knee.
A long, dim ecstasy holds her life;
Her world is an infinite shapeless white,
Till her tongue has curled the last holy drop,
Then she sinks back into the night,
Draws and dips her body to heap
Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair,
Lies defeated and buried deep
Three or four hours unconscious there.
A Visit From St. Nicholas
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
‘Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!