'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...
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. ...
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...
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! ...