morning gay,
To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament,
And looked upon a world in gentle day.

      But thy imperial call
Bade her to stand with thee and breast the light,
And therefore face the shadows, mystical,
Sombre, translucent, vestiges of night,

Yet glories of the day.
Eagle! we know thee by thy undaunted eyes
Sky-ward, and by thy glooms; we blow thy way
Ambiguous, and those halo-misted dyes.

      Thou Cloud, the bridegroom’s friend
(The bridegroom sun)!  Master, we know thy sign:
A mystery of hues world-without-end;
And hide-and-seek of gamesome and divine;

      Shade of the noble head
Cast hitherward upon the noble breast;
Human solemnities thrice hallowèd;
The haste to Calvary, the Cross at rest.

      Look sunward, Angel, then!
Carry the fortress-heavens by that hand;
Still be the interpreter of suns to men;
And shadow us, O thou Tower! for thou shalt stand.

A THRUSH BEFORE DAWN

A voice peals in this end of night
   A phrase of notes resembling stars,
Single and spiritual notes of light.
   What call they at my window-bars?
      The South, the past, the day to be,
      An ancient infelicity.

Darkling, deliberate, what sings
   This wonderful one, alone, at peace?
What wilder things than song, what things
   Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,
      Dearer than Italy, untold
      Delight, and freshness centuries old?

And first first-loves, a multitude,
   The exaltation of their pain;
Ancestral childhood long renewed;
   And midnights of invisible rain;
      And gardens, gardens, night and day,
      Gardens and childhood all the way.

What Middle Ages passionate,
   O passionless voice!  What distant bells
Lodged in the hills, what palace state
   Illyrian!  For it speaks, it tells,
      Without desire, without dismay,
      Some morrow and some yesterday.

All-natural things!  But more—Whence came
   This yet remoter mystery?
How do these starry notes proclaim
   A graver still divinity?
      This hope, this sanctity of fear?
      O innocent throat!  O human ear!

THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES:
of birth, 1864: of death, 1916.

TO SHAKESPEARE

      Longer than thine, than thine,
Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
O how ignoble this my clasp appears!

      Thy unprophetic birth,
Thy darkling death: living I might have seen
That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.
O first, O last, O infinite between!

      Now that my life has shared
Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,
To what all-vain embrace shall be compared
My lean enclosure of thy paradise?

      To ignorant arms that fold
A poet to a foolish breast?  The Line,
That is not, with the world within its hold?
So, days with days, my days encompass thine.

      Child,