Sir Lewis Morris Poems

O THRUSH, your song is passing sweet,
But never a song that you have sung
Is half so sweet as thrushes sang
When my dear love and I were young.
...

UNDER the picture gallery wall,
As a sea-leaf clings to a wave-worn rock,
Nor shrinks from the surging impetuous shock
Of the breakers which gather and whiten and fall
...

BEYOND the dim walls of the shadowy Past,
A sweet vague host of fancies flourishes,
Like garden seeds in some rough hollow cast,
Which all unasked the kind earth nourishes,
...

THE old lives are dead and gone and rotten,
The old thoughts shall never more be thought,
The old faiths have failed and are forgotten,
The old strifes are done, the fight is fought.
...

OH who shall say that we are free !
Surely life's chains are strong to bind
From youth to age, from birth to death,
Body and mind.
...

THE silent surfaces sleep
With a sullen viscous flow,
And scarce in the squalid deep
Swing the dead weeds to and fro,
...

I KNOW not if a keener smart
Can come to finer souls than his
Who hears men praise him, mind or heart,
For something higher than he is.
...

IF I were poor and weak,
Bankrupt of hope, and desolate of love;
Without a tongue to speak
The strange dumb thoughts of thee which through me move ;
...

THOU hast visited me with Thy storms,
And the vials of Thy sore displeasure
Thou hast poured on my head, like a bitter draught
Poured forth without stint or measure ;
...

I PACED along
The dim cathedral wrapped in reverend gloom :
I heard the sweet child's song
Spring upwards like a fountain ; and the boom
...