Works

When up aloft
I fly and fly,
I see in pools
The shining sky,
And a happy bird
Am I, am I!

When I descend
Towards their brink
I stand, and look,
And stoop, and drink,...

My old Welsh neighbor over the way
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
And listened to hear the robin sing.

Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,...

Little brown brother, up in the apple tree,
High on its blossom-rimmed branches aswing,
Here where I listen earth-bound, it seems to me
You are the voice of the spring.
...

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,...

Poor Robin sits and sings alone
When showers of driving sleet,
By the cold winds of winter blown,
The cottage casement beat.

Come, let him share our chimney nook,
And dry his dripping wing;...

Here, at its base, in dingled deeps
Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps,
The cold spring scoops its hollow;
And there three mossy stepping-stones
Make ripple murmurs; undertones...

The Rock-a-By Lady from Hushaby street
Comes stealing; comes creeping;
The poppies they hang from her head to her feet,
And each hath a dream that is tiny and fleet -...

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
Her stones of emptiness remain;
Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
The lonely waste of Edom's plain.

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft...

Some ask'd me where the Rubies grew:
And nothing I did say,
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where:
Then spoke I to my girl,...

A rock in the wilderness welcomed our sires,
From bondage far over the dark-rolling sea;
On that holy altar they kindled the fires,
Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for Thee....

This is the sea. In these uneven walls
A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away
Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls,
Her sisters through the capes that hold the bay
Dancing in lovely liberty recede....

A drear and desolate shore!
Where no tree unfolds its leaves,
And never the spring wind weaves
Green grass for the hunter's tread;
A land forsaken and dead,
Where the ghostly icebergs go...

God's rod doth watch while men do sleep, and then
The rod doth sleep, while vigilant are men.

A Rollicking Mastodon lived in Spain,
In the trunk of a Tranquil Tree.
His face was plain, but his jocular vein
Was a burst of the wildest glee.
His voice was strong and his laugh so long...

("Celui-ci, des Silvas, c'est l'a'n'.")

[HERNANI, Act III.]


In that reverend face
Behold the father of De Silva's race,
Silvius; in Rome he filled the consul's place...

'You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?'
- Byron.

...

Legate, I had the news last night, my cohort ordered home
By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:...

As related by Sergeant Leigh on the night he got his captaincy at the Restoration.

I'll tell you a story; but pass the 'jack',
And let us make merry to-night, my men....

There was a young patrolman who
Had large but tender feet;
They always hurt him badly when
He walked upon his beat.
(He always took them with him when
He walked upon his beat.)
...

While Merlin paced the Cornish sands,
Forth-looking toward the rocks of Scilly,
The pleased Enchanter was aware
Of a bright Ship that seemed to hang in air,
Yet was she work of mortal hands,...