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During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the Bri...

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those P'an-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--...

We keep in step as years roll by;
You march behind and I before: -
The path is new to you; but I
Have passed the ground you're walking o'er.
Yet I march on with measured tread,...

Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been fill'd with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come,...

To me at my fifth-floor window
The chimney-pots in rows
Are sets of pipes pandean
For every wind that blows;

And the smoke that whirls and eddies
In a thousand times and keys...

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,
Or whether to stay
And see thee not! How vast the difference seems
Of Yea from Nay
Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams
At no far day...

Lofty and enduring is the monument I've reared:
Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing;
And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared,
Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing!
...

Oh, him whom at birth you with favor regarded
Melpomene! never an Isthmian game
Shall render renowned, though he's skilled as a boxer,
Nor shall a swift horse lead him onward to fame....

A flight of doves, with wanton wings,
Flash white against the sky.
In the leafy copse an oriole sings,
And a robin sings hard by.
Sun and shadow are out on the hills;...

Speechless to thousands of others, who with deaf hearts would consult him,
Talketh the spirit to thee, who art his kinsman and friend.

He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit....

Touch but thy lyre, my Harry, and I hear
From thee some raptures of the rare Gotiere;
Then if thy voice commingle with the string,
I hear in thee rare Laniere to sing;...

Over vale and torrent far
Rolls along the sun's bright car.
Ah! he wakens in his course

Mine, as thy deep-seated smart

In the heart.
Ev'ry morning with new force.
...

Always thy book, too late acknowledged thine,
Now when thine eyes no earthly page may read;
Blinded with death, or blinded with the shine
Of love's own lore celestial. Small need,...

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,...

My temples throb, my pulses boil,
I'm sick of Song and Ode and Ballad -
So Thyrsis, take the midnight oil,
And pour it on a lobster salad.

My brain is dull, my sight is foul,...

Do I dream? can I trust to my eye?
My sight sure some vapor must cover?
Or, there, did my Minna pass by
My Minna and knew not her lover?
On the arm of the coxcomb she crossed,...

Youth is the time when all is bright;
The mind is free from care;
No thoughts of aught, save present joys,
Can find an entrance there.

And, if a thought of future years...

Time beckons on the hours: the expiring year
Already feels old Winter's icy breath;
As with cold hands, he scatters on her bier
The faded glories of her Autumn wreath....

Beneath the shelter of the bush,
In undisturbed repose
Unruffled by the kiss of breeze
There lurks a smiling rose;
Beneath thine outer beauty, gleams,
In holy light enshrined,...