Works

[1]


"Take back the virgin page."
MOORE'S Irish Melodies.


No longer dear Vesey, feel hurt and uneasy
At hearing it said by the Treasury brother,...

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,...

"With tears thy grief thou dost bemoan,
Tears that would melt the hardest stone,
Oh, wherefore sing'st thou not the vine?
Why chant'st thou not the praise of wine?
It chases pain with cunning art,...

1.

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story -
The days of our Youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.[604]...

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands lover of populous pavements;
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city or on southern savannas;...

I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
Smiter with whips and swords;
I, hater of the breakers of the law;
I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,
Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,...

1723

- cuicumque nocere volebat,
Vestimenta dabat pretiosa.[1]


Don Carlos, in a merry spight,
Did Stella to his house invite:
He entertain'd her half a year...

Antonio loved the Lady Clare.
He caught her to him on the stair
And pressed her breasts and kissed her hair,
And drew her lips in his, and drew
Her soul out like a torch's flare....

I learnt the language of the birds,
A new St Francis I would be;
But, when I understood their words,
The birds were preaching unto me.

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God's Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,...

"Open the coffin and shroud until
I look on the dead again
Ere we place her in Grenada's vaults,
Where sleep the Monarchs of Spain;
For unto King Charles must I swear
That I myself have seen...

Still, like dew in silence falling,
Drops for thee the nightly tear
Still that voice the past recalling,
Dwells, like echo, on my ear,
Still, still!

Day and night the spell hangs o'er me,...

Still thou fliest, and still I woo thee,
Lovely phantom,--all in vain;
Restless ever, my thoughts pursue thee,
Fleeting ever, thou mock'st their pain.
Such doom, of old, that youth betided,...

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!'...

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,...

No, Robbie! you can go away;
I am not ready yet to play;
For I must learn these words to spell,
That I may say my lesson well.

How sad our dear mamma would look,
To find that I had left my book!...

Reader! what soul that loaves a verse can see
The spring return, nor glow like you and me?
Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill,
Nor long to utter his melodious will?
...

The forest huge of ancient Caledon
Is but a name, no more is Inglewood,
That swept from hill to hill, from flood to flood:
On her last thorn the nightly moon has shone;...

I

That one long dirge-moan sad and deep,
Low, muffled by the solemn stress
Of such emotion as doth steep
The soul in brooding quietness,
Befits our anguished time too well,...

Tranquility! the sovereign aim wert thou
In heathen schools of philosophic lore;
Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore
The Tragic Muse thee served with thoughtful vow;
And what of hope Elysium could allow...