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We lay at St. Helen's, and easy she rode
With one anchor catted and fresh-water stowed;
When the barge came alongside like bullocks we roared,
For we knew what we carried with Nelson aboard.
...

Tom sang for joy and Ned sang for joy and old Sam sang for joy;
All we four boys piped up loud, just like one boy;
And the ladies that sate with the Squire - their cheeks were all wet,...

Why should we leave the soil our fathers cleared,
And lifelong tilled with patient, loving hands?
Why should we leave the homes our fathers reared,
And seek strange dwellings in unhallowed lands?...

[Written for a picture]


The Youth speaks: -
"Why do you seek the sun
In your bubble-crown ascending?
Your chariot will melt to mist.
Your crown will have an ending."
...

The Text.--As printed in Sharpe's Ballad Book, from the Skene MS. (No. 8). It is fragmentary--regrettably so, especially as stanzas 10-12 belong to Thomas Rymer.

...

"I have a thousand men," said he,
"To wait upon my will;
And towers nine upon the Tyne,
And three upon the Till."

"And what care I for your men? " said she,
"Or towers from Tyne to Till?...

How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,...

The sunlight fell with a golden gleam
On the waves of the rippling rill;
The pansies nodded their purple heads;
But the proud queen-rose stood still.
She loved the light and she loved the sun,...

(Written on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral)



The Queen is taking a drive to-day,
They have hung with purple the carriage-way,
They have dressed with purple the royal track...

Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy, ah! even to tears!
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.
...

Had I the power
To Midas given of old
To touch a flower
And leave the petals gold
I then might touch thy face,
Delightful boy,
And leave a metal grace,
A graven joy.
...

The Queer Querulous Quail,
who smoked a Pipe of tobacco on the top of
a Tin Tea-kettle.

Brethren, how shall it fare with me
When the war is laid aside,
If it be proven that I am he
For whom a world has died?

If it be proven that all my good,
And the greater good I will make,...

I

First I asked the honeybee,
Busy in the balmy bowers;
Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me:
Have you seen her, honeybee?
She is cousin to the flowers -
All the sweetness of the south...

I am looking for Love. Has he passed this way,
With eyes as blue as the skies of May,
And a face as fair as the summer dawn? -
You answer back, but I wander on, -...

The knight came home from the quest,
Muddied and sore he came.
Battered of shield and crest,
Bannerless, bruised and lame.
Fighting we take no shame,
Better is man for a fall....

I sought Him on the purple seas,
I sought Him on the peaks aflame;
Amid the gloom of giant trees
And canyons lone I called His name;
The wasted ways of earth I trod:
In vain! In vain! I found not God....

O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come,
Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum,
On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub,...

Shall England consummate the crime
That binds the murderer's hand, and leaves
No surety for the trust of thieves?
Time pleads against it, truth and time,
And pity frowns and grieves....

Beside us in our seeking after pleasures,
Through all our restless striving after fame,
Through all our search for worldly gains and treasures,
There walketh one whom no man likes to name....