Works

To Iris, In Bow Street, Convent Garden

Say, cruel IRIS, pretty rake,
Dear mercenary beauty,
What annual offering shall I make,
Expressive of my duty?

My heart, a victim to thine eyes,...

What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and the restless sea?
All that I have are gifts of your giving,...

Kusta Ben Luka is my name, I write
To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow-roysterer once,
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer,
And for no ear but his.
Carry this letter...

The dead child lay in the shroud,
And the widow watched beside;
And her mother slept, and the Channel swept
The gale in the teeth of the tide.

But the mother laughed at all....

Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day,
While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,...

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,...

The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in your cradle, and said to herself:
"I am well pleased with this child."...

Nosing around in an old box - packed away, and lost to memory for
years - an hour ago I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather, a
roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the old sheet for the...

A golden gilliflower to-day
I wore upon my helm alway,
And won the prize of this tourney.
Hah! hah! la belle jaune girofl'e.

However well Sir Giles might sit,
His sun was weak to wither it,...

Here, on the arid ridge
Of dead Vesuvius,
Exterminator terrible,
That by no other tree or flower is cheered,
Thou scatterest thy lonely leaves around,
O fragrant flower,...

As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to
alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from
every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks....

'Come, try your skill, kind gentlemen,
A penny for three tries!'
Some threw and lost, some threw and won
A ten-a-penny prize.

She was a tawny gipsy girl,
A girl of twenty years,...

The Text is from Motherwell's MS., a copy from tradition in Renfrewshire in 1825. The ballad exists both in English and Scottish, and though the English ballad is probably derived from the Scottish, it was the first in print. I...

Just like the berry brown is my bonny lassie O!
And in the smoky camp lives my bonny lassie O!
Where the scented woodbine weaves
Round the white-thorn's glossy leaves:...

How oft on Sundays, when I'd time to tramp,
My rambles led me to a gipsy's camp,
Where the real effigy of midnight hags,
With tawny smoked flesh and tattered rags,...

How oft on Sundays, when I'd time to tramp,
My rambles led me to a gipsy's camp,
Where the real effigy of midnight hags,
With tawny smoked flesh and tatter'd rags,...

Sung by Messrs. PYNE, NELSON, Miss WITHAM, and Master LONGHURST.--Composed by Mr. ROOKE.


We, who the wide world make our home;
The barren heath our cheerful bed;
Careless o'er mount and moor we roam,...

Our altar is the dewy sod
Our temple yon blue throne of God:
No priestly rite our souls to bind
We bow before the Almighty Mind.

Oh, Thou whose realm is wide as air...

The gipsy's life is a merry life,
And ranting boys we be;
We pay to none or rent or tax,
And live untith'd and free.
None care for us, for none care we,
And where we list we roam,...

When now cold winter's snows are fled,
And birds sing blithe again,
Look where the gipsy's tent is spread,
In the green village lane.

Oft by the old park pales, beneath
The branches of the oak,...