“All the wide world is but the thought of you”

All the wide world is but the thought of you: 
Who made you out of wonder and of dew? 
Was it some god with tears in his deep eyes,
Who loved a woman white and over-wise,
That strangely put all violets in your hair—­
And put into your face all distance too?

“Lightnings may flicker round my head”

Lightnings may flicker round my head,
  And all the world seem doom,
If you, like a wild rose, will walk
  Strangely into the room.

If only my sad heart may hear
  Your voice of faery laughter—­
What matters though the heavens fall,
  And hell come thundering after.

“The afternoon is lonely for your face”

The afternoon is lonely for your face,
  The pampered morning mocks the day’s decline—­
  I was so rich at noon, the sun was mine,
Mine the sad sea that in that rocky place
  Girded us round with blue betrothal ring. 
  Because your heart was mine, your heart, that precious thing.

The night will be a desert till the dawn,
  Unless you take some ferry-boat of dreams,
  And glide to me, a glory of silver beams,
Under my eyelids, like sad curtains drawn;
  So, by good hap, my heart can find its way
  Where all your sweetness lies in fragrant disarray.

Ah! but with morn the world begins anew,
  Again the sea shall sing up to your feet,
  And earth and all the heavens call you sweet,
You all alone with me, I all alone with you,
  And all the business of the laurelled hours
  Shyly to gaze on that betrothal ring of ours.

“Sore in need was I of A faithful friend”

Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
  And it seemed to me that life
Had come to its much desired end—­
  Just then God gave me a wife.

I had seen the beauty of fairy things,
  And seen the women walk;
I had heard the voice of the seven sins
  And all the wonderful talk.

Ah, the promising earth that seems so kind,
  And the comrades with outstretched hand—­
But did you ever stand alone
  In a black, forsaken land? 
Then the wonderful things that God can do
  One comes to understand: 

How He turns the desert dust to a dream,
  And the lonely wind to a friend,
And makes a bright beginning
  Of what had seemed the end: 
’Twas in such an hour God placed in mine
  The moonbeam hand of a friend.

“I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year”