Works

We have all of us read how the Israelites fled
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em,
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup"
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em....

All winter through I bow my head
Beneath the driving rain;
The North wind powders me with snow
And blows me black again;
At midnight 'neath a maze of stars
I flame with glittering rime,...

Here is a tale for prelates and for parsons:
There was a scarecrow once, a thing of tatters
And sticks and straw, to whom men trusted matters
Of weighty moment murders, thefts and arsons....

O all you little blackey tops,
Pray don't you eat my father's crops,
While I lie down to take a nap.
Shua O! Shua O!

If father he perchance should come,
With his cocked hat and his long gun,...

Water, water I desire,
Here's a house of flesh on fire;
Ope the fountains and the springs,
And come all to bucketings:
What ye cannot quench pull down;
Spoil a house to save a town:...

I see her as though she were standing yet
In her tower at the end of the town,
When the hot sun mounts and when dusk comes down,
With her two hands laid on the parapet;...

My Father Christmas passed away
When I was barely seven.
At twenty-one, alack-a-day,
I lost my hope of heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse:
The hell of it's because...

PREFACE.

...

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,...

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear....

'Oh, show me how a rose can shut and be a bud again!'
Nay, watch my Lords of the Admiralty, for they have the work in train.
They have taken the men that were careless lads at Dartmouth in 'Fourteen...

All night before the brink of death
In fitful sleep the army lay,
For through the dream that stilled their breath
Too gauntly glared the coming day.

But we, within whose blood there leaps...

I love to rise on a summer morn,
When birds are singing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
Oh what sweet company!
...

These hallowed precincts, long to memory dear,
Smile with fresh welcome as our feet draw near;
With softer gales the opening leaves are fanned,
With fairer hues the kindling flowers expand,...

A boy who savour'd of his school, -
A double rogue and double fool, -
By youth and by the privilege
Which pedants have, by ancient right,
To alter reason, and abridge, -...

A youngster, who was doubly foolish and doubly a rogue - in which perhaps he savoured of the school he went to - was given, they say, to robbing a neighbour's garden of its fruit and flowers. This may have been because he was t...

Our game was his but yesteryear;
We wished him back; we could not know
The self-same hour we missed him here
He led the line that broke the foe.

Blood-red behind our guarded posts...

O what harper could worthily harp it,
Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold
(Look out wold) with its wonderful carpet
Of emerald, purple, and gold!
Look well at it - also look sharp, it...

Whether I was myself, or else did see
Out of myself that glorious hierarchy;
Or whether those, in orders rare, or these
Made up one state of sixty Venuses;
Or whether fairies, syrens, nymphs they were,...

His step was light, and his looks as bright
As the beams of the morning sun,
And his boyish dreams, as the rippling streams
That gently onward run,
Without a shock from rugged rock...