Works

Who goes amid the green wood
With springtide all adorning her?
Who goes amid the merry green wood
To make it merrier?

Who passes in the sunlight
By ways that know the light footfall?...

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,...

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God's residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

I do not know his grace the Duke,
Outside whose gilded gate there died
Of want a feeble, poor old man,
With but his shadow at his side.

I do not know his Lady fair,
Who in a bath of milk doth lie;...

Who is a Christian in this Christian land
Of many churches and of lofty spires?
Not he who sits in soft upholstered pews
Bought by the profits of unholy greed,
And looks devotion, while he thinks of gain....

The clouds no more are flocking
After the flushing sun;
Bees end their long droning,
The bat's hunt is begun;
And the tired wind that went flittering
Up and down the hill
Lies like a shadow still,...

Why, oh why was Kater lifted
From the darkness, where he drifted
All unknown, and raised to honour,
Side by side with Dick O'connor,
In the Council, free from row?
Who is Kater, anyhow?
...

May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life,
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision,...

Who is the Maid my spirit seeks,
Thro' cold reproof and slander's blight?
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks?
Is hers an eye of this world's light?
No--wan and sunk with midnight prayer...

They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
...

Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer,...

Who lights the fire--that forth so gracefully
And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?
Some pretty one who never felt the yoke--
Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.
...

OF all the beauteous wares
Exposed for sale at fairs,
None will give more delight
Than those that to your sight
From distant lands we bring.
Oh, hark to what we sing!
These beauteous birds behold,...

Hymen, late, his love-knots selling,
Called at many a maiden's dwelling:
None could doubt, who saw or knew them,
Hymen's call was welcome to them.
"Who'll buy my love-knots?
"Who'll buy my love-knots?"...

Who'll wear the beaten colours, and cheer the beaten men?
Who'll wear the beaten colours, till our time comes again?
Where sullen crowds are densest, and fickle as the sea,...

Who robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away....

Jes' a little bit o' feller - I remember still -
Ust to almost cry fer Christmas, like a youngster will.
Fourth o' July's nothin' to it! - New Year's ain't a smell!...

O my prow vas plack mit curses,
Ven I dries to write dose verses;
Ven I dries to write dot boem,
Dot de best was effer been.
All in vain my peer I guzzles,
But I gannod solve dot broblem,...

'Harry! what, that yourself, back to old Vic., man,
Down from the Never Land? Now, what's your game?
Ugly as ever. Not dropped the old trick, man?
Say, what'll you take with me? Give it a name.
...

(The Argosy, Feb. 1866.)


God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself,...