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Once upon a time, there was a mighty baron in the North Countrie who was a great magician and knew everything that would come to pass. So one day, when his little boy was four years old, he looked into the Book of Fate to...

The wind is out in its rage to-night,
And your father is far at sea.
The rime on the window is hard and white
But dear, you are near to me.
Heave ho, weave low,
Waves of the briny deep;...

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes...

The waters rush'd, the waters rose,

A fisherman sat by,
While on his line in calm repose

He cast his patient eye.
And as he sat, and hearken'd there,

The flood was cleft in twain,...

In the dark waveless sea,
Deep blue under deep blue,
The fisher drifts by on the tide
In his small pole-balanced canoe.

Above him the cloud-clapped hills
Crown the dense jungly sweeps;...

Of all the gracious gifts of Spring,
Is there another can safely surpass
This delicate, voluptuous thing--
This dapple-green, plump-shouldered bass?
Upon a damask napkin laid,
What exhalations superfine...

The fisherman's wife stood on the beach.
One chilly April day,
And far out on the lake she look'd,
And o'er the waves, away.

The ice which late had spann'd for miles
This rolling, inland sea,...

Prayed the Fish, as the Fisherman took
Him, a poor little mite, from his hook,
"Let me go! I'm so small."
He replied, "Not at all!
You're the biggest, perhaps in the brook."
...

Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;...

At morn his bark like a bird
Slips lightly oceanward -
Sail feathering smooth o'er the bay
And beak that drinks the wild spray.
In his eyes beams cheerily
A light like the sun's on the sea,...

Silence! stir not! for a whisper
Would affright thy pretty prey;
Not a motion, little lisper,
Else the fish will glide away.

Hush! he's coming! he is swimming
Slowly round and round the bait;...

A long, low waste of yellow sand
Lay shining northward far as eye could reach,
Southward a rocky bluff rose high
Broken in wild, fantastic shapes.
Near by, one jagged rock towered high,...

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No pond nor pool within his haunt
But paid a certain cormorant
Its contribution from its fishes,
And stock'd his kitchen with good dishes.
Yet, when old age the bird had chill'd,...

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Thrysis - who for his Annette dear
Made music with his flute and voice,
Which might have roused the dead to hear,
And in their silent graves rejoice -
Sang once the livelong day,...

With Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("The Village Blacksmith")


Under the spreading deficit,
The Fitzroy Smithy stands;
The smith, a spendthrift man is he,
With too much on his hands;...

Tune - Chevy Chase.


There were five carlins in the south,
They fell upon a scheme,
To send a lad to London town,
To bring them tidings hame.

Not only bring them tidings hame,...

Oh, why do men their glasses clink
When good old honest wine they drink?

Wine is so excellent a thing
To lowest subject, or to highest king,
That every sense alike should share...

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
The sun grows passionate-eyed,
And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;
As strenuously we stride, -
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,...

The Fizzgiggious Fish,
who always walked about upon Stilts,
because he had no legs.

Here comes The Flag!
Hail it!
Who dares to drag
Or trail it?
Give it hurrahs, -
Three for the stars,
Three for the bars.
Uncover your head to it!
The soldiers who tread to it...