Works

A pencil, sir; a penny - won't you buy?
I'm cold and wet and tired, a sorry plight;
Don't turn your back, sir; take one just to try;
I haven't made a single sale to-night....

[In Edgar Allan Poe's story, 'The Pit and the Pendulum,' the victim is bound hand and foot, face upturned to a huge, knife-edged pendulum which swings back and forth across his body, the blade dropping closer to his heart at ea...

I mourn with thee and yet rejoice
That thou shouldst sorrow so;
With Angel choirs I join my voice
To bless the sinner's woe.

Though friends and kindred turn away
And laugh thy grief to scorn,...

I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,...

Prelude


I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime
And milder speech than those brave men's who brought
To the ice and iron of our winter time
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought...

'What have I earned for all that work,' I said,
'For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defamed,...

Out of her darkened fishing-ports they go,
A fleet of little ships, whose every name--
Daffodil, Sea-lark, Rose and Surf and Snow,
Burns in this blackness like an altar-flame;
...

Our hearts are set on pleasure and on gain.
Fine clothes, fair houses, more and daintier bread;
We have no strivings, and no hunger-pain
For spiritual food; our souls are dead....

I

I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine -...

To-morrow, Julia, I betimes must rise,
For some small fault to offer sacrifice:
The altar's ready: fire to consume
The fat; breathe thou, and there's the rich perfume.

Old Peter led a wretched life -
Old Peter had a furious wife;
Old Peter too was truly stout,
He measured several yards about.

The little fairy Picklekin
One summer afternoon looked in,...

I've often thought that headstrong youths,
Of decent education,
Determine all-important truths
With strange precipitation.

The over-ready victims they,
Of logical illusions,...

"To Panurge was assigned the Laird-ship of Salmagundi, which was yearly worth 6,789,106,789 ryals besides the revenue of the Locusts and Periwinkles, amounting one year with another to the value of 2,485,768," etc.--RABELAIS....

The Perpendicular Purple Polly,
who read the Newspaper and ate Parsnip Pie
with his Spectacles.

The dull world clamors at my feet
And asks my hand and helping sweet;
And wonders when the time shall be
I'll leave off dreaming dreams of thee.
It blames me coining soul and time...

Once a turtle, finding plenty
In seclusion to bewitch,
Lived a dolce far niente
Kind of life within a ditch;
Rivers had no charm for him,
As he told his wife and daughter,...

Lives there a bard for genius famed
Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
She summons up the fiends of night;
Hatred and malice by her stand,...

IDYL CCCLXVI
THE ACCOMPANIMENTS
1. The Monthly Nurse
2. The Caudle
3. The Sentences
THE KID

1. THE MONTHLY NURSE

The sickly airs had died of damp;...

Here is a tale for uncles and old aunties:
There was a man once who denied the Devil,
Yet in the world saw nothing else but evil;
A pessimist, with face as sour as Dante's....

The pessimistic locust, last to leaf,
Though all the world is glad, still talks of grief.