Works

'The iniquity of the fathers upon the children.'


Oh the rose of keenest thorn!
One hidden summer morn
Under the rose I was born.

I do not guess his name
Who wrought my Mother's shame,...

'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
'Stretch bones till the daylight come...

Under the sea, the great wide sea
That sweeps the golden shore;
What treasures lie beneath the waves
Forevermore!

Ask of the winds, the sobbing winds
That toss the waves on high;...

Deep in the bosom of the ocean,
Where sunshine fades to twilight gloom,
The pure pearls lie, and the coral bloom
Rests unsway'd by the upper motion--
Calm and still the hours pass by...

This is the place where they all were bred;
Some of the rafters are standing still;
Now they are scattered and lost and dead,
Every one from the old nest fled,
Out of the shadow of Kiley's Hill.
...

What a terrible night! Does the Night, I wonder -
The Night, with her black veil down to her feet
Like an ordained nun, know what lies under
That awful, motionless, snow-white sheet?...

Over the mountains, under the snow
Lieth a valley cold and low,
'Neath a white, immovable pall,
Desolate, dreary, soulless all,
And soundless, save when the wintry blast
Sweeps with funeral music past....

Under the stars, when the shadows fall,
Under the stars of night;
What is so fair as the jeweled crown
Of the azure skies, when the sun is down,
Beautiful stars of light!
...

High on the world did our fathers of old,
Under the stars and stripes,
Blazon the name that we now must uphold,
Under the stars and stripes.
Vast in the past they have builded an arch...

"Under the trees!" Who but agrees
That there is magic in words such as these?
Promptly one sees shake in the breeze
Stately lime-avenues haunted of bees:
Where, looking far over buttercupp'd leas,...

Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light; -
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
...

April 27,1861

Eighty years have passed, and more,
Since under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,...

"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme...

Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.
...

The fight I loved - the good old fight -
Was clear as day 'twixt Might and Right;
Satrap and slave on either hand,
Tiller and tyrant of the land;
One delved the earth the other trod,...

Sorrow and sin have worked their will
For years upon your sovereign face,
And yet it keeps a faded trace
Of its unequalled beauty still,
As ruined sanctuaries hold
A crumbled trace of perfect mould...

I

The eyes of heaven were on her bent,
In a rapture of loving wonderment,
As her song with the nightingale's was blent:
And one yearn'd for a love, and one sigh'd for a soul!
...

Undue significance a starving man attaches
To food
Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,
And therefore good.

Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
That spices fly...

My tongue undulates, a wave to shore,
knocks a vigorous reef,
then slides to sea once more.

The coral pink horizon of the mouth,
cavernous shores,
my tongue laps pier white teeth...

Is mine the part of no companion hand
Of help, except my shadow's silent self?
A moonlight traveller in Fancy's land
Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf;
...