Old Kensington

My prayers with this I used to charge: A piece of land not very large, Wherein there should a garden be; A clear spring flowing ceaselessly; And where, to crown the whole, there...

In the battle of life are we all going to try for the honours of championship? If we can do our duty, if we can keep our place pretty honourably through the combat, let us say '...

Shepherd, what's love, I pray thee tell. It is that fountain and that well Where pleasure and repentance dwell, It is perhaps that sauncing bell That tolls all into heaven or he...

The carriage drove through the Place de la Concorde. The fountains were tossing and splashing sunlight, the shadow of the Obelisk was travelling across the pavement. The old pal...

Yesterday _this_ day's madness did prepare, To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair. Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor w...

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it blooms the garden that I love; News from the teeming city comes to it, In sound of funeral or marriage bells.

Where are the great, whom thou wouldst wish to praise thee? Where are the pure, whom thou wouldst choose to love thee? Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee, Whose hi...

The doors of the old Library at All Saints' were open wide to admit the sunshine: it lighted up the starched frill collars of _Fundator noster_ as he hung over the entrance. It...

Frank, accepted Lady Henley's invitation and arrived at Henley Court just before dinner-time one day. The place lies beyond Pebblesthwaite, on the Smokethwaite road. It was a mo...

Robert had come back from India prepared to fight Dolly's battle. Although expressing much annoyance that this disagreeable task should have been left to him, he remembered Rhod...

For an hour Frank kept watch alone in the empty rooms below. The doctor had come and gone. He said, as they knew he would, that all was over, there was nothing more to be done f...

D'un linceuil de point d'Angleterre Que l'on recouvre sa beaute ... Que des violettes de parme Au lieu des tristes fleurs des morts, Ou chaque fleur est une larme, Pleuvent en b...

Twelve o'clock is striking in a bare room full of sunshine. A woman, who is spending her twelfth year in bed, is eating tripe out of a basin; another sitting by the fire is dini...

An' I hallus comed to's choorch afoar moy Sally wur deaed, An' eerd un a bummin' awaaey loike a buzzard clock ower my yeaed, An' I niver knaw'd whot a meaen'd, but I thowt a ad...

'Extremely fortunate,' repeats Dolly's mamma, looking thoughtfully at her fat satin shoes. 'What a lottery life is! I was as pretty as Dolly, and yet dear Stanham had not anythi...

Christ hath sent us down the angels, And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar-candles, Lit for blessed mysteries. And a Priest's hand through creation Waveth calm...

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow-- His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

It was as well perhaps that the cruel news should have come to Dolly as it did, suddenly, without the torture of apprehension, of sympathy. She knew the worst now, she had seen...

Go; when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished, What thou hast done, and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then; Go with the sun and the stars, and yet ev...

Some one sent Dolly a great bunch of white roses that afternoon; they came in with a late breath of summer--shining white with dark leaves and stems--and, as Dolly bent her head...

Frank Raban arrived that evening. The fires were burning a cheerful greeting; the table was laid in the library; his one plate, his one knife and fork, were ready. After all, it...

Dolly was to be married at the Kensington parish church. Only yesterday the brown church was standing--to-day a white phoenix is rising from its ashes. The old people and the ol...

When Dolly awoke next morning Rhoda was dressed and her bed was empty. The window had been opened, but the light was carefully shaded by the old brown curtains. Dolly lay quite...

I have no wealth of grief; no sobs, no tears. Nor any sighs, no words, no overflow, Nor storms of passion; no reliefs; yet oh! I have a leaden grief, and with it fears Lest they...

In those days, as I have said, the hawthorn spread across the fields and market-gardens that lay between Kensington and the river. Lanes ran to Chelsea, to Fulham, to North End,...

Dolly heard the luncheon-bell ringing as she walked slowly homewards. It seemed to her as if she had been hearing a story which had been told her before, with words that she rem...

Somewhere in the fairyland of Dorothea's imagination rises a visionary city, with towers and gables straggling against the sky. The streets go up hill and down hill, leading by...

I will tell you when they parted. When plenteous autumn sheaves were brown, Then they parted heavy-hearted. The full rejoicing sun looked down As grand as in the days before: On...

Rhoda, as she sat at her work, used to peep out of the bow-windows at the people passing up and down the street--a pretty girlish head, with thick black plaits pinned away, and...

How sweet they are, those long sunset evenings on the river! the stream, flowing by swift and rippling, reflects the sky--sometimes, in the still gleams and depths of dying ligh...

Fain would I but I dare not; I dare and yet I may not; I may although I care not, for pleasure when I play not. You laugh because you like not; I jest whenas I joy not You pierc...

He helped her into the dark carriage: everybody seemed to lean forward at once and say good-night; there was a whistle, a guard banged the door, Mrs. Palmer stretched her long n...

Frank Raban, having left the three standing silent and sorry in the calm sunset room, ran down to his own apartment on the floor beneath. He was to go back to England that night...

The next day Dolly, coming down into the garden, found Raban with her mother, and she went up eagerly to meet him, hoping for the news she was looking for. But news there was no...

Lady Henley had always piqued herself upon a certain superiority to emotion of every kind,--youth, love, sorrow had seemed to her ridiculous things for many years. This winter,...

Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Whilst flowers are gay, Whilst eyes that change ere night Make glad the day, Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou, and from thy sleep The...

For some days before the picnic Mrs. Palmer and Julie had been absorbed in the preparation of two beautiful garments that were to be worn at Mrs. Middleton's dinner, and at a ba...

There are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's gallery, drifting and following each other like the images of a dissolving-view. There are voices and faces changin...

The letter announcing poor Stanham's death came from a Captain Palmer, a friend of Stan's, whose ship was stationed somewhere in that latitude, and who happened to have been wit...

The idea of a man's interviewing himself is rather odd to be sure. But then that is what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a...

George was shivering and sick at heart; the avenue led to a door that opened into the bar of the hotel, and George went in and called for some brandy. The spirits seemed to do h...

The waunut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle fires danced all about The chiny on the dresser; The very room, coz she was in, Looked warm from fl...

Oh! purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, By taking true for false, and false for true. Here, thro' the...

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange, And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, Wh...

For every shrub, and every blade of grass, And every pointed thorn seemed wrought in glass; In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show, While through the ice the crimson berri...

These were days not to be forgotten by Dolly or by her aunt. Don't we all know how life runs in certain grooves, following phases of one sort or another? how dreams of coming tr...

Dolly went to afternoon church the day George was expected. When she came home she heard that her brother was upstairs, and she hurried along the passage with a quick-beating he...

Dolly passed through the sleeping house, crept by the doors, slid down the creaking stairs, into the hall. The shutters were unopened as yet, the dawning day was bolted out, and...

Thoughts seem occasionally to have a life of their own--a life independent; sometimes they are even stronger than the thinkers, and draw them relentlessly along. They seize hold...

There is George sitting at the old piano in the drawing-room. The window is wide open. The Venetian glass is dazzling over his head, of which the cauliflower shadow is thrown up...

Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-raftered many-cobwebbed Hall, He found an ancient dame in dun brocade, And near her, like a blossom vermeil-w...

The much-talked-of tea was standing, black as the waters of oblivion, in the teapot when they rejoined Mrs. Palmer. Philippa was sitting tete-a-tete with Raban, and seemed chief...

A quarter of a century ago the shabby tide of progress had not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady Sarah Francis's house was standing, with its many windows dazzling as th...

When they were a little calmed down, when they had left the moon and the stars outside in the garden, and were all standing in a group in the drawing-room round the chair in whi...

The partings were over. Dolly lived upon that last farewell for many a day to come. Such moments are states, and not mere measures of life. Everything else was sad enough. Lady...

Dolly and her mother had left the Middletons' when John Morgan drove up in a hansom, with a message from his mother to bring them back at once. The servant told him that they we...

The conversation of selfish people is often far more amusing than that of the unselfish, who see things too _diffusedly_, and who have not, as a rule, the gift of vivid descript...

packet. I bought the form in the town as I walked down to the boats; it all seems a horrid dream as I think of it now, and I am very much ashamed of that whole business; and yet...