Works

'Ah, friend! 'tis true--this truth you lovers know--
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow,
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:...

Auspicious poet, wert thou not my friend,
How could I envy, what I must commend!
But since 'tis nature's law, in love and wit,
That youth should reign, and withering age submit,...

In one great now, superior to an age,
The full extremes of nature's force we find:
How heavenly virtue can exalt, or rage
Infernal how degrade the human mind.
...

Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long,...

How much, egregious Moore, are we
Deceived by shows and forms!
Whate'er we think, whate'er we see,
All humankind are worms.

Man is a very worm by birth,
Vile reptile, weak and vain!...

An Ode on a Lost Volume of my Poems Which He Desired Me to Replace that He Might Add Them to My Other Works Deposited in the Library.

Strophe I

My two-fold Book! single in show
But double in Contents,...

Strophe I

My two-fold Book! single in show
But double in Contents,
Neat, but not curiously adorn'd
Which in his early youth,
A poet gave, no lofty one in truth...

The blast of common censure could I fear,
Before your play my name should not appear;
For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too,
I pay the bribe I first received from you;...

To thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band,
Condemn'd to labour in a barbarous land,
Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays,
And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise.
...

Sir, o'er a gill I gat your card,
I trow it made me proud;
See wha tak's notice o' the bard
I lap and cry'd fu' loud.

Now deil-ma-care about their jaw,
The senseless, gawky million:...

Dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan, -
I hasten to give you a hearty British welcome.
Come to my arms;
I am in the Trust line myself -
That is to say, I used to be
Before people started putting up announcements...

True laureate of the Anglo-Saxon race,
Whose words have won the hearts of young and old;
So free from cant, and yet replete with grace,
Or prose or verse it glows like burnished gold;...

Oh lady! thou, who in the olden time
Hadst been the star of many a poet's dream!
Thou, who unto a mind of mould sublime,
Weddest the gentle graces that beseem
Fair woman's best! forgive the darling line...

To see thee every day that came,
And find thee still each day the same;
In pleasure's smile or sorrow's tear
To me still ever kind and dear;--
To meet thee early, leave thee late,...

WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM.


They say that Love had once a book
(The urchin likes to copy you),
Where, all who came, the pencil took,
And wrote, like us, a line or two.
...

What was thine errand here?
Thy beauty was more exquisite than aught
That from this marred earth
Takes its imperfect birth;
It was a radiant, heavenly beauty, caught
From some far higher sphere,...

The night-wind's shriek is pitiless and hollow,
The boding bat flits by on sullen wing,
And I sit desolate, like that "one swallow"
Who found (with horror) that he'd not brought spring:...

Tell me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
So pure to feel, so sweet to hear.

Say, Love, in all thy prime of fame,...

You always are making a god of your spouse;
But this neither Reason nor Conscience allows;
Perhaps you will say, 'tis in gratitude due,
And you adore him, because he adores you....

I dedicate these verses to one whom I hold dear,
One who in the dark days drew in Christian kindness near
May He who led me all my life do so and more to me
If ever I forget the debt of love I owe to thee.