Works

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
Filling up your narrow room?
You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure -
Picture of bachelor gloom!
...

Tune - "Captain O'Kean."

I.

The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale;
The hawthorn trees blow in the dew of the morning,...

When well we speak and nothing do that's good,
We not divide the hoof, but chew the cud;
But when good words by good works have their proof,
We then both chew the cud and cleave the hoof.

Their wise little heads with scorning
They laid the covers between:
"Do they think we stay here till morning?"
Said Rory and Aileen.

When out their bright eyes came peeping...

Upon the barren sand
A single captive stood;
Around him came, with bow and brand,
The red-men of the wood.
Like him of old, his doom he hears,
Rock-bound on ocean's rim:...

"I was walking, dearest mother,
This morning, by the brook,
And tired at last I rested me
Within a shady nook.

"There all was still and lonely,
And suddenly I heard...

Come, maids and matrons, to caress
Wiesbaden's gentle hind;
And, smiling, deck its glossy neck
With forest flowers entwined.

'Twas after church, on Ascension day,
When organs ceased to sound,...

A dear old couple my grandparents were,
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child;
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them...

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,
"I have been favoured so
With cloudless skies, I must expect
This dash of rain or snow."

"Since health has been my lot," you say,
"So many months of late,...

O aye! they had woone child bezide,
An' a finer your eyes never met,
Twer a dear little fellow that died
In the summer that come wi' such het;
By the mowers, too thoughtless in fun,...

The sunset was a sleepy gold,
And stars were in the skies
When down a weedy lane he strolled
In vague and thoughtless wise.

And then he saw it, near a wood,
An old house, gabled brown,...

Of the childhood of our Saviour
Tells one simple verse alone;
Yet from that his whole behavior
When he was a child, is known.

He was subject to his mother,
So the holy Scriptures say;...

Beside the path, on either hand,
To keep the garden beds,
The rusted iron pickets stand
Thin shafts and pointed heads.

And straight my spirit swooping goes
Across the waves of time...

Toward God in heaven spacious
With artless faith a boy looks free,
As toward his mother gracious,
And top of Christmas-tree.
But early in the storm of youth
There wounds him deep the serpent's tooth;...

The light of dawn rose on my dreams,
And from afar I seemed to hear
In sleep the mellow blackbird call
Hollow and sweet and clear.

I prythee, Nurse, my casement open,...

I prythee, Nurse, come smooth my hair,
And prythee, Nurse, unloose my shoe,
And trimly turn my silken sheet
Upon my quilt of gentle blue.

My pillow sweet of lavender
Smooth with an amiable hand,...

"Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."
...

Heavily slumbered noonday bright
Upon the lone field, glory-dight,
A burnished grassy sea:
The child, in gorgeous golden hours,
Through heaven-descended starry flowers,
Went walking on the lea.
...

Heavily lay the warm sunlight
Upon the green blades shining bright,
An outspread grassy sea:
She through the burnished yellow flowers
Went walking in the golden hours
That slept upon the lea.
...

There are here put in juxtaposition three versions in ballad-form of the same story, though fragmentary in the two latter cases, not only because each is good, but to show the possibilities of variation in a popular story. Ther...