Works

Minneapolis ban qvite bonny
Ven early fall the dew;
It ban dar dat ay ask Steena
To mak her promise true, -
To mak her promise true;
But she yust pass me by;
And she tal me, "Maester Olaf,...

Oh! listen to the tale of little Annie Protheroe.
She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW;
She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day -...

Annie she's dowie, and Willie he's wae:
What can be the matter wi' siccan a twae,
For Annie she's fair as the first o' the day,
And Willie he's honest and stalwart and gay?
...

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree....

Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.
Silver of mist and gossamers,...

Our fathers, in the years grown dim, reared slowly, wall by wall
A holy dwelling-place for Him, that filleth all in all.
They wrought His house of faith and prayer, the rainbow round the Throne,...

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,...

Why pacest thou, my neighbour fair,

The garden all alone?
If house and land thou seek'st to guard,

I'd thee as mistress own.

My brother sought the cellar-maid,
...

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;...

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,...

The night is loud with reeds of rain
Rejoicing at my window-pane,
And murmuring, "Spring comes again!"

I hear the wind take up their song
And on the sky's vibrating gong...

Loud complaints being made in these quick-reading times,
Of too slack a supply both of prose works and rhymes,
A new Company, formed on the keep-moving plan,
First proposed by the great firm of Catch-'em-who-can,...

When erst, my Southey, thy tuneful tongue
The terrible tale of Thalaba sung--
Of him, the Destroyer, doomed to rout
That grim divan of conjurors out,
Whose dwelling dark, as legends say,...

"The Lord appeared in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed." - EXODUS III. 2.


When to your virgin heart, unstirred, ungiven,...

Immortal eloquence of mystic Art!
How strangely o'er oblivion and gray time,
That hand doth speak, as in the painter's prime
It uttered thus his own and Mary's heart,...

Kneeling in prayer, her spirit rapt above,
She meets with God, Who bendeth, brooding low,
In vast compassion humanward, and so,
There comes upon her life the power of Love:...

I ransack'd for a theme of song,
Much ancient chronicle, and long;
I read of bright embattled fields,
Of trophied helmets, spears, and shields,
Of chiefs, whose single arm could boast...

The Year Of Wonders, 1666.

An Historical Poem.



An Account Of The Ensuing Poem, In A Letter To The Honourable Sir Robert Howard.

...

A month ago Lysander pray'd
To Jove, to Cupid, and to Venus,
That he might die if he betray'd
A single vow that pass'd between us.

Ah, careless gods, to hear so ill...

The Text is from a broadside of the seventeenth century from the press of Coles, Vere, Wright, and Clarke, now preserved in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library.

...