Works

Days undefiled by luxury or sloth,
Firm self-denial, manners grave and staid,
Rights equal, laws with cheerfulness obeyed,
Words that require no sanction from an oath,
And simple honesty a common growth,...

Lady, sweet lady, I behold thee yet,
With thy pale brow, brown eyes, and solemn air,
And billowy tresses of thy golden hair,
Which once to see, is never to forget!...

An Ode. 1685.


I.

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,...

What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,
Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer
Thou com'st to man's abode the spot grew dearer
Night after night? True is it Nature hides...

Though joy attend Thee orient at the birth
Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most
To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth,
In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost,...

'Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!

'Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium;...

"Speak, O man less recent!
Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!
...

What cares the rose if the buds which are its pride
Be plucked for the breast of the dead or the hands of a bride?

The mother-drift if its pebbles be dull inglorious things,...

Let thy speech be to thee what the body is to the loving;
Beings it only can part, beings it only can join.

Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made
That work a living landscape fair and bright;
Nor hallowed less with musical delight
Than those soft scenes through which thy childhood strayed,...

My dear Poet Laureate, -
Do not, I implore you,
Be perturbed.
It is not my purpose to harp
Upon old strings,
Or to express the smallest satisfaction
Either with you as an official personage...

Himself I read beneath the words he writes ...
I may come back and sing again. - RYAN.


I.

This Bard's to me a whole-souled man
In honesty and might,
For when he sees Wrong in the van...

When evening's shadowy fingers fold
The flowers of every hue,
Some shy, half-opened bud will hold
Its drop of morning's dew.

Sweeter with every sunlit hour
The trembling sphere has grown,...

May it please your Holiness
There are possibly two,
Or it may be three,
Men
In Europe
Who could indite this Ode
Without treading on anybody's corns.
After mature reflection,...

It may be so, - perhaps thou hast
A warm and loving heart;
I will not blame thee for thy face,
Poor devil as thou art.

That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose,
Unsightly though it be, -...

Well, Miss, I wonder where you live,
I wonder what's your name,
I wonder how you came to be
In such a stylish frame;
Perhaps you were a favorite child,
Perhaps an only one;...

My dear Sir, -
You may think it unkind of me
To interrupt the peaceful calm of your holiday
With a poem about business.
But I assure you, my dear sir,
That I do so with the very best intentions,...

What are these bustlers at the gate
Of now or yesterday,
These playthings in the hand of Fate,
That pass, and point no way;

These clinging bubbles whose mock fires
For ever dance and gleam,...

To The Publisher! - Drink!
Let his virtue be shown
In the Good Works of others
If not in his own.

O loyal to the royal in thyself,
And loyal to thy land, as this to thee--
Bear witness, that rememberable day,
When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the Prince
Who scarce had plucked his flickering life again...