UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

Given, not lent, And not withdrawn--once sent - This Infant of mankind, this One, Is still the little welcome Son.

New every year, New-born and newly dear, He comes with tidings and a song, The ages long, the ages long.

Even as the cold Keen winter grows not old; As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, And spring in the familiar green;

Sudden as sweet Come the expected feet.

All joy is young, and new all art, And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

A DEAD HARVEST [IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]

Along the graceless gra.s.s of town They rake the rows of red and brown, Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay, Delicate, neither gold nor grey, Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park; Between the lights a narrow dark.

One street rolls on the north, and one, m.u.f.fled, upon the south doth run.

Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop; for it the fire Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.

So go the town's lives on the breeze, Even as the sheddings of the trees; Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

THE TWO POETS

Whose is the speech That moves the voices of this lonely beech?

Out of the long West did this wild wind come - Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, Ready and dumb, until The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.

Two memories, Two powers, two promises, two silences Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves The purpose of the past, Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last.

"Whose is the word?

Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?"

"Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!"

"Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, Thou visitant divine."

"O thou my Voice, the word was thine."

"Was thine."

A POET'S WIFE

I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land Within a field's embrace - The very sea! Afar it fled the strand And gave the seasons chase, And met the night alone, the tempest spanned, Saw sunrise face to face.

O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!

In inaccessible rest And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir, Scattered through east to west, - Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her Who locks thee to her breast.

VENERATION OF IMAGES

Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat, Gather, clasp, welcome, bind, Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat With love of thine own kind;

Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea, Unshrined on this high-way, O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee, Thou rood of every day!

AT NIGHT

Home, home from the horizon far and clear, Hither the soft wings sweep; Flocks of the memories of the day draw near The dovecote doors of sleep.

O which are they that come through sweetest light Of all these homing birds?

Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?

Your words to me, your words!