Works

The Text here given is that of a MS. in the Bodleian Library (Ashmole 48) of about the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was printed by Hearne, and by Percy in the Reliques, and the whole MS. was edited by Thomas Wright ...

When we went hunting the Dragon
In the days when we were young,
We tossed the bright world over our shoulder
As bugle and baldrick slung;
Never was world so wild and fair
As what went by on the wind,...

Fit the First
THE LANDING

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
...

When hill and dale, long years ago,
Lay clad in nature's dress,
And flourish'd the primeval pomp
Of nature's wilderness,

A huntsman and his hound would roam,
Where fed the timid deer,...

Three jolly gentlemen,
In coats of red,
Rode their horses
Up to bed.

Three jolly gentlemen
Snored till morn,
Their horses champing
The golden corn.

Three jolly gentlemen,...

The dusky warriors stood in groups around the funeral pyre,
The scowl upon their knotted brows betrayed their vengeful ire.
It needed not the cords, the stake, the rites so stern and rude,...

Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,...

WHEN Francis (named the first) o'er Frenchmen reign'd,
In Italy young Arthur laurels gained,
And oft such daring valour showed in fight,
With ev'ry honour he was made a knight;...

"Can anything avail
Beldame, for my hid grief? -
Listen: I'll tell the tale,
It may bring faint relief! -

"I came where I was not known,
In hope to flee my sin;
And walking forth alone...

[1]

A man that loved, - and loved his wife, -
Still led an almost joyless life.
No tender look, nor gracious word,
Nor smile, that, coming from a bride,
Its object would have deified,...

I, who went at nightfall, came again at dawn;
On Love's door again I knocked. Love was gone.

He who oft had bade me in, now would bid no more;
Silence sat within his house; barred its door.
...

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay...

Dear little Hut by the rice-fields circled,
That cocoa-nuts shade above.
I hear the voices of children singing,
And that means love.

When shall the traveller's march be over,...

Now comes the fierce north-easter, bound
About with clouds and racks of rain,
And dry, dead leaves go whirling round
In rings of dust, and sigh like pain
Across the plain.
...

After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.

How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit....

And I, cooing in my saddle, with lost time.
His weapons and horses the finest.
Beloved of God, engendered fiercely
for the occasion - with
pin stripes and a drinking vessel
of the most expert silver....

The Hydra Hercules defied,
Its nine diminished heads must hide
Before the baneful modern beast
Who has a thousand heads at least.
See how in horrid tiers they rise,
With straining ears and bulging eyes,...

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:...

He is clean gold, he is Heaven about the sun, he is a silver vessel having wine in it; he is an angel, he is the wisdom of saints; everyone that is doing the will of the King.
...

I have listened to the sighing of the burdened and the bound,
I have heard it change to crying, with a menace in the sound;
I have seen the money-getters pass unheeding on the way,...