Works

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.
...

All dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea
If purer for that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?

She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit, --
And see!

You know that oasis, fresh and fair
In the city desert, as Greeley square?

That bright triangle of scented bloom
That lies surrounded by grime and gloom?

Right in the breast of the seething town...

The Tumultuous Tom-tommy Tortoise,
who beat a Drum all day long in the
middle of the wilderness.

No one goes there now:
For what is left to fetch away
From the desolate battlements all arow,
And the lead roof heavy and grey?
Therefore, said fair Yoland of the flowers,...

The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, LORD! that Arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs,
And silent thoughts my only prayers.

My choir shall be the moonlight waves,...

A totally perverse Turk bought for himself,
Out of grief for the recent death
Of plump Fatme, his favorite wife,
From his white-slaver, two former mannequins, in quite good
condition -...

We blame the mote that dims the eye
Of other men, whose faults we spy;
But we ignore the beam that lies
With stronger strain in one's own eyes.

A turkey, who grew dull at home,...

As specks appear on fields of snow,
So blemishes on beauty show.

A peacock fed in a farm-yard
Where all the poultry eyed him hard -
They looked on him with evil eye,...

("Si je n''tait captive.")

[IX., July, 1828.]


Oh! were I not a captive,
I should love this fair countree;
Those fields with maize abounding,
This ever-plaintive sea:...

Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat.
She's a mess o' funny capahs f'om huh slippahs to huh hat.
Ef you tries to un'erstan' huh, an' you fails, des' up an' say:...

Storm, strong with all the bitter heart of hate,
Smote England, now nineteen dark years ago,
As when the tide's full wrath in seaward flow
Smites and bears back the swimmer. Fraud and fate...

I was playing with my hoop along the road
Just where the bushes are, when, suddenly,
There came a shout., I ran away and stowed
Myself beneath a bush, and watched to see...

Ah! sad wer we as we did peace
the wold church road, wi' downcast feace,
the while the bells, that mwoaned so deep
above our child a-left asleep,
wer now a-zingen all alive...

Behind an unfrequented glade,
Where yew and myrtle mix their shade,
A widow Turtle pensive sat,
And wept her murder'd lover's fate.
The Sparrow chanced that way to walk,...

Stately, lang-robit, an' steppin at ease,
The rich men gaed up the temple ha';
Hasty, an' grippin her twa baubees,
The widow cam efter, booit an' sma'.

Their goud rang lood as it fell, an' lay...

The Text is from Sharpe's Ballad Book (1823). Scott included no version of this ballad in his Minstrelsy; but Motherwell and Jamieson both had traditional versions. Motherwell considered it essential that the deadly wound shoul...

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a maen:
The tane unto the t'ither did say,
"Whaur shall we gang and dine the day?"

"O doun beside yon auld fail dyke,...

Twas in that place o' Scotland's isle
That bears the name o' Auld King Coil,
Upon a bonnie day in June,
When wearing through the afternoon,
Twa dogs that were na thrang at hame,...