Works

Christina, maiden of heroic mien!
Star of the North! of northern stars the queen!
Behold, what wrinkles I have earn'd, and how
The iron cask still chafes my vet'ran brow,...

Dean Bourn, farewell; I never look to see
Dean, or thy watery[1] incivility.
Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams
And makes them frantic even to all extremes,
To my content I never should behold,...

Dear Miller: You and I despise
The cad who gathers books to sell 'em,
Be they but sixteen-mos in cloth
Or stately folios garbed in vellum.

But when one fellow has a prize...

Though doctors may your name discard
And say you physicked vilely,
I would I were as good a bard
As you a doctor, Wylie!

How often, when your skill subdued
The fever ranging highly,...

Stretch towards the moonless midnight of the trees,
As though that hand could reach to where they stand,
And they but famous old upholsteries
Delightful to the touch; tighten that hand...

1729

- Tanti tibi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi quodque in mare volvitur aurum. - Juv. iii, 54.

As some raw youth in country bred,
To arms by thirst of honour led,...

1.
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower...

I dare not spoil this spotless page
With any feeble verse of mine;
The Poet's fire has lost its rage,
Around his lyre no myrtles twine.

The voice of fame cannot recal...

A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er.
The world takes sides: whether for impious aims
With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames
A generous people to heroic war;...

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
- If all organic things
Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite
From this bleak spot of thorn,...

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
As in a dream preposterous and sublime,...

On the Eightieth Anniversary of his Birth,

High thought and hallowed love, by faith made one,
Begat and bare the sweet strong-hearted child,
Art, nursed of Nature; earth and sea and sun...

I

Whenas, (I love that 'whenas' word,
It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey's back...

Verse. My God, I'm wounded by my sin,
And sore without, and sick within.
Ver. Chor. I come to Thee, in hope to find
Salve for my body and my mind.
Verse. In Gilead though no balm be found...

Gold I have none, but I present my need,
O Thou, that crown'st the will, where wants the deed.
Where rams are wanting, or large bullocks' thighs,
There a poor lamb's a plenteous sacrifice....

Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,
If worth in me, or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same?
Then may your worthy self from whom it came.
The principle might yield a greater sum,...

My spirit to yours, dear brother;
Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you;
I do not sound your name, but I understand you, (there are others also;)...

For being comely, consonant, and free
To most of men, but most of all to me;
For so decreeing that thy clothes' expense
Keeps still within a just circumference;
Then for contriving so to load thy board...

Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight,
But stay the time till we have bade good-night.
Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way
As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day....

Words beget anger; anger brings forth blows;
Blows make of dearest friends immortal foes.
For which prevention, sociate, let there be
Betwixt us two no more logomachy....