Ever before my face there went
  Betwixt earth’s buds and me
A beauty beyond earth’s content,
  A hope—­half memory: 
Till in the woods one evening—­
  Ah! eyes as dark as they,
Fastened on mine unwontedly,
  Grey, and dear heart, how grey!

NAPOLEON

“What is the world, O soldiers? 
It is I: 
I, this incessant snow,
  This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
  Through which we go
      Is I.”

ENGLAND

No lovelier hills than thine have laid
  My tired thoughts to rest: 
No peace of lovelier valleys made
  Like peace within my breast.

Thine are the woods whereto my soul,
  Out of the noontide beam,
Flees for a refuge green and cool
  And tranquil as a dream.

Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal;
  Thy clouds—­how oft have I
Watched their bright towers of silence steal
  Into infinity!

My heart within me faults to roam
  In thought even far from thee: 
Thine be the grave whereto I come,
  And thine my darkness be.

TRUCE

Far inland here Death’s pinions mocked the roar
    Of English seas;
We sleep to wake no more,
    Hushed, and at ease;
Till sound a trump, shore on to echoing shore,
Rouse from a peace, unwonted then to war,
    Us and our enemies.

EVENING

When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl
Through the dewy air to prowl.

Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits,
While the small mouse atrembling sits
With tiny eye of fear upcast
Until his brooding shape be past,
Hiding her where the moonbeams beat,
Casting black shadows in the wheat.

Now all is still:  the field-man is
Lapped deep in slumbering silentness. 
Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high
Pass in dim flocks across the sky,
Puffed by a breeze too light to move
Aught but these wakeful sheep above.

O what an arch of light now spans
These fields by night no longer Man’s! 
Their ancient Master is abroad,
Walking beneath the moonlight cold: 
His presence is the stillness, He
Fills earth with wonder and mystery.

NIGHT

All from the light of the sweet moon
    Tired men lie now abed;
Actionless, full of visions, soon
    Vanishing, soon sped.

The starry night aflock with beams
    Of crystal light scarce stirs: 
Only its birds—­the cocks, the streams,
    Call ’neath heaven’s wanderers.

All silent; all hearts still;
    Love, cunning, fire fallen low: 
When faint morn straying on the hill
    Sighs, and his soft airs flow.