Works

Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
'What can we tax that is not paying?
We're taxing every blessed thing'
Here's what our people are defraying:

'Tariff tax, income tax,
Tax on retail sales,...

Yon sound's neither sheep-bell nor bark,
They're running - they're running, Go hark!
The sport may be lost by a moment's delay;
So whip up the puppies and scurry away....

Away, away! The plains of Ind
Have set their victim free;
I give my sorrows to the wind,
My sun-hat to the sea;
And, standing with a chosen few,
I watch a dying glow,
The passing of the Finest View...

The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands.
They poke the young men in.
The young men burn like withes.

If one run a little way,
The old men are wrath....

Near the house flowed, or paused, the black Canal,
Edged by the timber piles so black and tall.
From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull
Along the footpath, slow and beautiful,...

The squatter saw his pastures wide
Decrease, as one by one
The farmers moving to the west
Selected on his run;
Selectors took the water up
And all the black soil round;...

They had long met o' Zundays her true love and she -
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he
Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be...

Hark! high o'er the rattle and clamour and clatter
Of traffic-filled streets, do you hear that loud noise?
And pushing and rushing to see what's the matter,
Like herds of wild cattle, go pell-mell the boys.
...

Section One

"Give the engines room,
Give the engines room."
Louder, faster
The little band-master
Whips up the fluting,
Hurries up the tooting.
He thinks that he stands,...

Devereux Farm, Near Marblehead

We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
...

The Text is from Motherwell's Minstrelsy. He received the ballad from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharp. In Maidment's North Countrie Garland there is a similar version with a number of small verbal differences.

...

Men make them fires on the hearth
Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
They blow the smoke to me.

Across the high hills and the sea
And all the changeful skies,...

I

Time gathers to my name;
Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed
I see the years with little triumph crowned,
Exulting not for perils dared, downcast
And weary-eyed and desolate for shame...

"Tweet" pipes the robin as the cat creeps by
Her nestling young that in the elderns lie,
And then the bluecap tootles in its glee,
Picking the flies from orchard apple tree,...

The fire that filled my heart of old
Gave luster while it burned;
Now only ashes gray and cold
Are in its silence urned.
Ah! better was the furious flame,
The splendor with the smart;...

They are creeping on through the cornfields yet, and they clamber amongst the rocks,
Ere they rush to stab with the bayonet and smash with the rifle-stocks....

The wind is keen, the frost is dread,
Toward the icy water,
By aunt and mother forth is led
The fisher's lovely daughter.

"Dive in, dive in, my child, with haste!
There's naught whereon to ponder,...

("Avez-vous oui dire?")

[LES BURGRAVES, Part I., March, 1843.]


JOB. Hast thou ne'er heard men say
That, in the Black Wood, 'twixt Cologne and Spire,...

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR 1703.

ARGUMENT.
...

The harvest sun lay hot and strong
On waving grain and grain in sheaf,
On dusty highway stretched along,
On hill and vale, on stalk and leaf.

The wind which stirred the tasseled corn...