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"Dance!" called the fiddle,
Its strings loudly giggled,
The bailiff's man wriggled
Ahead for a spree.
"Hold!" shouted Ola
And tripped him to tumbling,
The bailiff's man humbling,...

Mark the concentred hazels that enclose
Yon old grey Stone, protected from the ray
Of noontide suns: and even the beams that play
And glance, while wantonly the rough wind blows,...

Were silver pink, and had a soul,
Which soul were shy, which shyness might
A visible influence be, and roll
Through heaven and earth - 'twere thou, O light!

O rhapsody of the wraith of red,...

So one in heart and thought, I trow,
That thou might'st press the strings and I might draw the bow
And both would meet in music sweet,
Thou and I, I trow.


1881.

(AFTER SIR L. M.)

Next I saw
A pensive gentleman of middle age,
That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe
Pendent beneath his chin, a double one,
(Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath,...

"There, on the left!" said the colonel: the battle had shuddered and faded away,
Wraith of a fiery enchantment that left only ashes and blood-sprinkled clay -...

They'd parted but a year before, she never thought he'd come,
She stammer'd, blushed, held out her hand, and called him 'Mister Gum.'
How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur 'John.'...

Mary had a little frog
And it was water-soaked,
But Mary did not keep it long
Because, of course, it croaked!

The Text given here is from Sharpe's Ballad Book (1824). Professor Child collected and printed some twenty-eight variants and fragments, of which none is entirely satisfactory, as regards the telling of the story. The present t...

When aw cooarted Mary Hanner,
Aw wor young an varry shy;
An shoo used to play th' peanner
Wol aw sheepishly sat by.
Aw lang'd to tell her summat,
But aw railly hadn't th' pluck,...

"He will come to night," young Mary said,
And checked the rising sigh;
And gazed on the stars that o'er her head
Shone out in the deep blue sky.
"Heaven speed his voyage!--though absent long,...

She is the sky of the sun,
She is the dart
Of love,
She is the love of my heart,
She is a rune,
She is above
The women of the race of Eve
As the sun is above the moon.
...

"While it was yet dark."

Mary of Magdala, when the moon had set,
Forth to the garden that was with night dews wet,
Fared in the dark - woe-wan and bent was she,...

Our Order, like the ark of yore,
Upon the raging sea was tossed;
Secure amid the billow's roar,
It moved, and nothing has been lost.

When elements discordant seek
To wreck what God in mercy saves,...

Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,
...

Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps:
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumb'ring child with pensive eyes,...

In the waste hour
Between to-day and yesterday
We watched, while on my arm -
Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone -
Dabbled in sweat the sacred head...

A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
His path into our waiting hearts
Already paved by song.

Full well we knew his choristers,...

May is building her house. With apple blooms
She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;
Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,
And, spinning all day at her secret looms,...

W'y, one time wuz a little-weenty dirl,
An' she wuz named Red Riding Hood, 'cause her -
Her Ma she maked a little red cloak fer her
'At turnt up over her head - An' it 'uz all...