Many a flower have I seen blossom,
Many a bird for me will sing.
Never heard I so sweet a singer,
Never saw I so fair a thing.

She is a bird, a bird that blossoms,
She is a flower, a flower that sings;
And I a flower when I behold her,
And when I hear her, I have wings.

The Deserted House

There's no smoke in the chimney,
And the rain beats on the floor;
There's no glass in the window,
There's no wood in the door;
The heather grows behind the house,
And the sand lies before.

No hand hath trained the ivy,
The walls are grey and bare;
The boats upon the sea sail by,
Nor ever tarry there.
No beast of the field comes nigh,
Nor any bird of the air

Oh, a gallant set were they,
As they charged on us that day,
A thousand riding like one!
Their trumpets crying,
And their white plumes flying,
And their sabres flashing in the sun.

Oh a sorry lot were we,
As we stood beside the sea,
Each man for himself as he stood!
We were scattered and lonely-
A little force only
Of the good men fighting for the good.

But I never loved more
On sea or on shore
The ringing of my own true blade.
Like lightening it quivered,
And the hand helms shivered,
As I sang, “None maketh me afraid!”

I
Through the sunny garden
The humming bees are still;
The fir climbs the heather,
The heather climbs the hill.

The low clouds have riven
A little rift through.
The hill climbs to heaven,
Far away and blue.

II

O the high valley, the little low hill,
And the cornfield over the sea,
The wind that rages and then lies still,
And the clouds that rest and flee!

O the gray island in the rainbow haze,
And the long thin spits of land,
The roughening pastures and the stony ways,
And the golden flash of the sand!

O the red heather on the moss-wrought rock,
And the fir-tree stiff and straight,
The shaggy old sheep-dog barking at the flock,
And the rotten old five-barred gate!

O the brown bracken, the blackberry bough,
The scent of the gorse in the air!
I shall love them ever as I love them now,
I shall weary in Heaven to be there!


III

Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live
But in that grace!
I shall have gathered all the world can give,
Unending Time and Space!

Bring light and air--the thin and shining air
Of the North land,
The light that falls on tower and garden there,
Close to the gold sea-sand.

Bring flowers, the latest colours of the earth,
Ere nun-like frost
Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth,
With twinkling emerald crossed.

The white star of the traveller's joy, the deep
Empurpled rays that hide the smoky stone,
The dahlia rooted in Egyptian sleep,
The last frail rose alone.

Let music whisper from a casement set
By them of old,
Where the light smell of lavender may yet
Rise from the soft loose mould.

Then shall I know, with eyes and ears awake,
Not in bright gleams,
The joy my Heavenly Father joys to make
For men who grieve, in dreams!