Mother chid her sons
     Not of the giant brood, who did create
     Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
     Set moving by an abject blood, that waked
     To wanton under elements more benign,
     And planted aliens on Olympian heights; —
     Imagination’s cradle poesy
     Become a monstrous pressure upon men; —
     Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed
     By light from her, born of the love of her,
     Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
     For earth’s beneficent, the sons of Law,
     Her other name.  So spake she in their heart,
     Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
     Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,
     Confidently to cling.  And when brown corn
     Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
     With gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss;
     When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil
     Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
     When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
     Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;
     The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
     And yet a burning lion for the spring;
     Then in that time of general cherishment,
     Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,
     He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
     Then did good Gaea’s children gratefully
     Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,
     Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call
     Harmoniously and images her Law;
     Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,
     In memories made present on the brain
     By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;
     The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
     Between them the known smile behind black masks;
     Rightly their various moods interpreted;
     And frolic because toilful children borne
     With larger comprehension of Earth’s aim
     At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.

     Poem:  The Night-Walk

     Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
     All radiantly the moon’s own night
     Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
     Our shadows down the highway white
     Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
     With yon and yon a stem alight.

     I see marauder runagates
     Across us shoot their dusky wink;
     I hear the parliament of chats
     In haws beside the river’s brink;
     And drops the vole off alder-banks,
     To push his arrow through the stream. 
     These busy people had our thanks
     For tickling sight and sound, but theme
     They were not more than breath we drew
     Delighted with our world’s embrace: 
     The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
     And watered grass in breezy space;
     The silken heights, of ghostly bloom
     Among their folds, by distance draped.