Works

Sweet baby, sleep! what ails my dear,
What ails my darling thus to cry?
Be still, my child, and lend thine ear
To hear me sing thy lullaby.
My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;...

There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;...

The sun-browned girl, whose limbs recline
When noon her languid hand has laid
Hot on the green flakes of the pine,
Beneath its narrow disk of shade;

As, through the flickering noontide glare,...

By the waters of Cam, as the shades were descending,
A Fellow sat moaning his desolate lot;
From his sad eyes were flowing salt rivulets, blending
Their tide with the river which heeded them not -
...

Suthin' to put in a story!
I couldn't think of a thing,
'N' it's nigh unto thirty year now
Since fust I went in the ring.
"The life excitin'?" Thunder!
"Variety," did you say?...

("His Friends" To Quintus Horatius Flaccus.)

"H'c decies repetita [non] placebit."--Ars Poetica.


Flaccus, you write us charming songs:
No bard we know possesses...

See, Thaliarch mine, how, white with snow,
Soracte mocks the sullen sky;
How, groaning loud, the woods are bowed,
And chained with frost the rivers lie.

Pile, pile the logs upon the hearth;...

Now stands Soracte white with snow, now bend the laboring trees,
And with the sharpness of the frost the stagnant rivers freeze.
Pile up the billets on the hearth, to warmer cheer incline,...

Man is for woman made,
And woman made for man:
As the spur is for the jade,
As the scabbard for the blade,
As for liquor is the can,
So man's for woman made,
And woman made for man.
...

A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn,
A flash of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees, --
And I'm a rose!

Tune - "The Rose-bud."


I.

A rose-bud by my early walk,
Adown a corn-enclosed bawk,
Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,
All on a dewy morning.
Ere twice the shades o' dawn are fled,...

You saw her last, the ball-room's belle,
A souffl', lace and roses blent;
Your worldly worship moved her then;
She does not know you now, in Lent.

See her at prayer! Her pleading hands...

The hills look down on wood and stream,
On orchard-land and farm;
And o'er the hills the azure-gray
Of heaven bends the livelong day
With thoughts of calm and storm.
...

At morn I plucked a rose and gave it Thee,
A rose of joy and happy love and peace,
A rose with scarce a thorn:
But in the chillness of a second morn
My rose bush drooped, and all its gay increase...

My soul, do you remember the object we saw
on what was a fine summer's day:
at the path's far corner, a shameful corpse
on the gravel-bed, darkly lay,

legs in the air, like a lecherous woman,...

I caught, for a second, across the crowd -
Just for a second, and barely that -
A face, pox-pitted and evil-browed,
Hid in the shade of a slouch-rim'd hat -
With small gray eyes, of a look as keen...

All.

Now that the Spring hath fill'd our veins
With kind and active fire,
And made green liv'ries for the plains,
And every grove a quire:

Sing me a song of merry glee,...

Wide thro' the azure blue and bright
Serenely floats the lamp of night;
The sleeping waves forget to move,
And silent is the cedar grove;
Each breeze suspended seems to say -...

Death, I would plead against thy wrong,
Who hast reft me of my love, my wife,
And art not satiate yet with strife,
But needs wilt hold me lingering long.
No strength since then has kept me strong:...

Theleme is afar on the waters, adrift and afar,
Afar and afloat on the waters that flicker and gleam,
And we feel but her fragrance and see but the shadows that mar
Theleme....