Works

In life's first years as on a mother's breast,
When Nature nurs'd me in her flowery pride,
I cull'd her bounty, such as seemed best,
And made my garlands by some hedge-row side:...

As I wandered the forest,
The green leaves among,
I heard a Wild Flower
Singing a song.

'I slept in the earth
In the silent night,
I murmured my fears
And I felt delight.
...

"O tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin' norlan' Wind,
As ye cam' blawin' frae the land that's niver frae my mind?
My feet they traivel England, but I'm dee'in for the north."...

The Wildgrave winds his bugle-horn,
To horse, to horse! halloo, halloo!
His fiery courser snuffs the morn,
And thronging serfs their lord pursue.

The eager pack, from couples freed,...

That day we wandered 'mid the hills, - so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:...

The rain-clouds have gone to the deep
The East like a furnace doth glow;
And the day-spring is flooding the steep,
And sheening the landscape below.
Oh, ye who are gifted with souls...

The wasting thistle whitens on my crest,
The barren grasses blow upon my spear,
A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith
And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love,...

Because I am mad about women I am mad about the hills," Said that wild old wicked man Who travels where God wills. "Not to die on the straw at home. Those hands to close these eyes, That is all I ask, my dear, From the old man ...

In a waste of yellow sand, on the brow of a dreary hill,
A slight little slip of a rose struggled up to the light,
The seed maybe was sown there by the south wind's idle will,...

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
...

[1]

If what old story says of Aesop's true,
The oracle of Greece he was,
And more than Areopagus[2] he knew,
With all its wisdom in the laws.
The following tale gives but a sample...

No grief is grown so desperate, but the ill
Is half way cured if the party will.

A song for the willow, the wild weeping willow,
That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days,
And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow
Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays!...

Lush green the grass that grows between
The willows of the bottom-land;
Verged by the careless water, tall and green,
The brown-topped cat-tails stand.

The cows come gently here to browse,...

A willow garland thou did'st send
Perfum'd, last day, to me,
Which did but only this portend -
I was forsook by thee.

Since so it is, I'll tell thee what,
To-morrow thou shalt see...

I am in love with a child dreaming at the window.

Not for her elaborate house
On the banks of Yellow River;

But for a willow-leaf she has let fall
Into the water.
...

There once was a Willow, and he was very old,
And all his leaves fell off from him, and left him in the cold;
But ere the rude winter could buffet him with snow,...

The skies they were ashen and sober,
The streets they were dirty and drear;
It was night in the month of October,
Of my most immemorial year.
Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,...

Deep in the hollow wood he found a way
Winding unto a water, dim and gray,
Grayer and dimmer than the break of day;
By which a wildrose blossomed; flower on flower
Leaning above its image hour on hour,...

When man is punish'd, he is plagued still,
Not for the fault of nature, but of will.