Works

The violet in her greenwood bower,
Where birchen boughs with hazel mingle,
May boast itself the fairest flower
In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.

Though fair her gems of azure hue,...

Upon the mead a violet stood,
Retiring, and of modest mood,

In truth, a violet fair.
Then came a youthful shepherdess,
And roam'd with sprightly joyousness,
And blithely woo'd
...

Little simple violet,
Glittering with dewy wet,
Hidden by protecting grass
All unheeded we should pass
Were it not the rich perfume,
Leads us on to find the bloom
Which so modestly does dwell,...

Thrice hail the still unconquered King of Song!
For all adore and love the Master Art
That reareth his throne in temple of the heart;
And smiteth chords of passion full and strong...

Touch gently, friend, and slow, the violin, So sweet and low,
That my dreaming senses may be beckoned so
Into a rest as deep as the long past "years ago!"
So softly, then, begin;
...

But that one air for all that throng! And yet
How wondrously the magic strain went through
Those thousand hearts! I saw young eyes, that knew
Only the fairest sights, grow dim and wet,...

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;...

Try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose
From his first love, no matter who she be.
Oh, was there ever sailor free to choose,
That didn't settle somewhere near the sea?
...

To work a wonder, God would have her shown
At once a bud and yet a rose full-blown.

Who is that goddess to whom men should pray
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named in scorn...

My little love, my darling,
You were a doorway to me;
You let me out of the confines
Into this strange countrie,
Where people are crowded like thistles,
Yet are shapely and comely to see.
...

Much strange is true. And yet so much
Dan Time thereto of doubtful lays
He blurs them both beneath his touch:--

In this our tale his part he plays.
At Florence, so the legend tells,...

Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges,
Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;
But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining...

The rod was but a harmless wand,
While Moses held it in his hand;
But, soon as e'er he laid it down,
Twas a devouring serpent grown.
Our great magician, Hamet Sid,
Reverses what the prophet did:...

Whilom by silver Thames's gentle stream,
In London town there dwelt a subtile wight;
A wight of mickle wealth, and mickle fame,
Book-learn'd and quaint: a Virtuoso hight....

The Visibly Vicious Vulture,
who wrote some Verses to a Veal-cutlet in a
Volume bound in Vellum.

Of that dear vale where you and I have lain
Scanning the mysteries of life and death
I dreamed, though how impassable the space
Of time between the present and the past!...

Long had she knelt at the Madonna's shrine,
With the empty chapel, cold and grey,
Telling her beads, while grief with marring line
And bitter tear stole all her youth away.
...

Duan First.[1]


The sun had clos'd the winter day,
The curlers quat their roaring play,
An' hunger'd maukin ta'en her way
To kail-yards green,
While faithless snaws ilk step betray...

Sitting alone, as one forsook,
Close by a silver-shedding brook,
With hands held up to love, I wept;
And after sorrows spent I slept:
Then in a vision I did see
A glorious form appear to me:...