Past Poetry

I’m just in love with all these three,The Weald and the Marsh and the Down country.Nor I don’t know which I love the most,The Weald or the Marsh or the white Chalk coast! I’ve buried my heart in a ferny hill,Twix’ a liddle low shaw an’ a great high gill.Oh hop-bine yaller an’ wood-smoke blue,I … Read more

Where the sober-colored cultivator smilesOn his byles;Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crowCome and go;Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,Hides and ghi;Where the Babu drops inflammatory hintsIn his prints;Stands a City, Charnock chose it, packed awayNear a Bay,By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewerMade impure,By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swampMoist … Read more

Where’s the lamp that Hero litOnce to call Leander home?Equal Time hath shovelled it‘Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.Neither wait we any moreThat worn sail which Argo bore. Dust and dust of ashes closeAll the Vestal Virgin’s care;And the oldest altar showsBut an older darkness there.Age-encamped OblivionTenteth every light that shone. Yet shall we, … Read more

Now, this is the cup the White Men drinkWhen they go to right a wrong,And that is the cup of the old world’s hate,Cruel and strained and strong.We have drunk that cup, and a bitter, bitter cup,And tossed the dregs away.But well for the world when the White Men drinkTo the dawn of the White … Read more

Fair is our lot, O goodly is our heritage!(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)For the Lord our God Most HighHe hath made the deep as dry,He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth! Yea, though we sinned, and our rulers went from righteousness,Deep in all … Read more

Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,And departed in guise of bairagi avowed! Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet.The sal and the kikar must guard him from … Read more

Have you no Bananas, simple townsmen all?“Nay, but we have them certainly.“We buy them off the barrows, with the vegetable-marrows“And the cabbage of our own country,“(From the costers of our own country.)” Those are not Bananas, simple townsmen all.(Plantains from Canaryward maybe!)For the true are red and gold, and they fill no steamer’s hold,But flourish … Read more

Friend, thou beholdest the lightning? Who has the charge of it—To decree which rock-ridge shall receive—shall be chosen for targe of it?Which crown among palms shall go down, by the thunderbolt broken;While the floods drown the sere wadis where no bud is token? First for my eyes, above all, he made show of his treasure.First … Read more

Be well assured that on our sideThe abiding oceans fight,Though headlong wind and heaping tideMake us their sport to-night.By force of weather, not of war,In jeopardy we steer.Then welcome Fate’s discourtesyWhereby it shall appearHow in all time of our distress,And our deliverance too,The game is more than the player of the game,And the ship is … Read more

The first time that Peter denied his LordHe shrank from the cudgel, the scourge and the cord,But followed far off to see what they would do,Till the cock crew,till the cock crew,After Gethsemane, till the cock crew! The first time that Peter denied his Lord‘Twas only a maid in the palace who heard,As he sat … Read more